Charm Is Deceitful
by AlyshebaFan1
Summary: Could Carlton Lassiter actually have a successful relationship? Better yet, can Juliet keep from going crazy because of it? Will eventually be Lassiet, so be warned.
1. Chapter 1

Okay, anybody remember Sophie Morris Bridgewater from _Sixty Million Years Off_? Well, I recall Lassiter finding her attractive, and Juliet being appalled that he hadn't noticed that she had changed her hair three times in the past week. So this is definitely AU, it could end up Lassiet, it might not. I don't know. I'm just going with an idea that I hope might grow into something.

I also post this while experiencing deep personal guilt, because I can't seem to get a handle on _Playbills Can't Pay Bills_. I do that. I start a story, and then the muse giggles and leaves me in despair. Hrmph.

Featured song tonight: _Midnight Rider_, by Willie Nelson (all other versions pale in comparison…just saying)

Spoilerish for S6, but Shules and Carlowe do not exist here. I can't stand writing Shules (besides writing 'What is she _doing_ with that mendacious, thieving, disrespectful, increasingly pudgy **_buffoon_**?'), and there's already a growing number of excellent Carlowe fics as it is. So there. :)

* * *

Carlton remembered that movie, from a few years ago – _Throw Mama From the Train_ – where the wizened old woman (really, a kind of pre-Gollum) suggested that Billy Crystal start his novel with 'The night was sultry'. Only Anne Ramsey's voice could give that particular line the force it required, and sure enough, Billy's character had snapped and set out to indeed throw her from the train.

He figured this weather could be a good start to a novel or a complete mental _snap_, as it was also very sultry. Damned hot, in fact, and humid. Chase a piece of ice across the floor, go postal and end up on the roof with a deer rifle, desperately-need-some-freaking-_sex_ hot. It was starting to get to him, even in the air-conditioned comfort of the room, and this stakeout at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was about to bore him to tears to boot.

So much for the Great American Novel. Nothing had happening, so far, to warrant a novel. Maybe a novella. Perhaps even an operetta. A really bad operetta…but weren't most of them already pretty bad? Something by Wagner, then, since his operas were all lousy with anti-Semitic undertones, but then Wagner's operas lasted six days and ended with everybody wearing a horned hat and dead in a rather emphatically Teutonic matter, the stage littered with swords, shields and brass brassieres.

So…maybe a short opera about a bored, lonely (but not anti-Semitic) man sitting in a dark room watching security camera feeds, drinking coffee and eating his thirteenth oatmeal cookie crème sandwich so far. Okay, so maybe not an opera. Something perhaps featuring the music of Pink Floyd. He snickered. Yes – he was at the point now of being rather comfortably numb. What of it? He had been for years now, after all.

He yawned and stretched, glancing at the video of the long hallway toward the gallery featuring dinosaur bones and other paleontological discoveries, geegaws, whatjamacallems and worthless crap that he had no interest in, mainly because the idea of building a fifty-foot dinosaur from a single tooth and a toenail seemed just a bit…_far fetched_ (if not entirely silly). In that particular gallery was that photograph of Spencer after 'discovering' a dinosaur at some farm a few years ago. The arrogant little prick had been posing as though he was Indiana Jones, trying to look manly and impressive, when in fact he was about as awe-inspiring as a pile of dandruff, and considerably less intelligent.

Lassiter sighed, knowing he was perhaps a little bitter. Spencer got all the press, and pranced around like a show pony on crack, demanding everybody pay attention to him while taking credit for other people's work, stole anything that caught his eye, lied outrageously and successfully hid the fact that he was a con man from almost everybody…and of course the media ate up his schtick. Then again, the media also paid attention to sideshow freaks, politicians and serial killers, and those types also craved constant adulation from everyone around them. He pushed his bitterness aside, yawned again, and resumed watching the screens, sipping chrome-stripper coffee and unwrapping another oatmeal cream cookie.

God, he loved those things. He could eat hundreds of them in one sitting, with O'Hara staring at him in horror. He never failed to snicker at her about his high metabolism, which would get him smacked on the arm and a bunch of huffs and feminine-disgust pouts. As if it was his fault he descended from a long line of skinny, starving Irishmen for whom every meal always seemed like the last.

Movement on one of the screens caught his eye, and the opera finally started getting interesting. He leaned forward, watching in growing amusement as a shadowy figure skulked down the hall toward the Gallery of Ancient Egyptian Art, keeping flush against the wall. The figure was looking from side to side, and gestured toward someone out of camera range, and Carlton's shoulders dropped when he saw a second person trailing behind the first. The two figures kept in the shadows, and were soon inside the gallery.

He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm.

Someone had been stealing small but significant treasures from the Egyptian exhibit, and the museum director had requested a stakeout, as they suspected it was a museum employee doing the stealing – a classic inside job. Carlton had agreed to do it, and hadn't minded very much at all when Vick had assigned him to it as a solo job, as O'Hara was on vacation, visiting her mother in Miami, and the Village Idiot and his hapless friend were off doing some kind of nitwit male bonding thing up north and had been uninterested in the case anyway, since it had no chance of getting said Village Idiot on the evening news. Though, frankly, Carlton was half expecting it to be _Spencer_ stealing the artifacts, since the smarmy little twerp wasn't above filching a few items from crime scenes when he thought no one was looking.

It was a pretty relaxed case, all around, or at least _relaxing_. The burglars were apparently very harmless, having never hurt anyone in their nicking of solid gold artifacts, and they hadn't actually ever broken a lock or smashed glass in the display cases, which was another indication of an inside job. Carlton switched on the camera to the Egyptian gallery, and watched as the two figures, one tall and lean, the other rather pudgy and short – a larcenous Laurel and Hardy – went to one of the display cases. The taller of the two thieves produced a key and unlocked it, sliding the door open.

That was enough for prosecution. Carlton got up and casually strolled out of the room, ambling easily down the hallway toward the Egyptian exhibit room. He unholstered his Glock out as he entered the room, and whistled at the two thieves, who were so startled the taller man dropped his key, which clattered on the floor.

"Hey, how ya doin'?" Carlton asked in an icily friendly voice, nub of his Glock pointed at the space between the tall guy's eyes.

"He made me do it!" the pudgy one said, pointing at his companion, who looked exasperated and thumped him on the top of his head.

"I'm sure he did," Carlton nodded, taking his cuffs out. "I've always enjoyed arresting people who have no ability to think for themselves. Makes my job so much easier. Now…move over there, hands against the wall. No use smudging the glass." He quickly frisked both men, then began reading them their rights. "You have the right to remain silent…"

* * *

The museum director, a grim-looking Rottweiler of a man who reminded Carlton of a white Ving Rames, regarded the two thieves impassively and finally turned back to the detective. "Yes, they're both employees at the museum. I'm appalled they would do this. They were good workers."

The two thieves – Randall Tompkins and Billy Oliver – worked as movers for the museum, carrying boxes, paintings, and whatnot, unloading crates from trucks and helping to set up displays. The two men, roommates, had fessed up and called their lawyers, hoping to negotiate light sentences, since neither had prior records. Carlton had taken McNab with him to search their apartment and had found most of the stolen artifacts, while those that were missing were in the process of being traced, starting with pawn shops. McNab was on that job at the moment.

"Well, I'm glad it all turned out so well, Mr Price," Carlton nodded. "I suspect we'll recover most of the stolen items, too."

"Excellent work, detective. We appreciate your help," Price said, clapping him on the arm, which made Carlton flinch a little. The man had no notion of his own strength. Still, he nodded politely and glanced at the two thieves, who were seated together in the interrogation room, looking put out. They had confessed easily enough (how could they not?), and the case was wrapped up in a matter of just two nights of drinking too much coffee and not sleeping at all. Carlton was looking forward to a day _off_, which was rare enough, but damn it, he was forty-three and tired and coming down from a caffeine high.

"We really do appreciate your work, Detective," the museum's curator, Sophie Morris Bridgewater said, smiling at Carlton, and she tucked a lock of golden hair behind her ear, looking strangely jittery, which made Carlton pause for just a moment to study her – had she gotten into that coffee, too? Maybe that was why she looked a little flushed, he decided. When she smiled at him, however, he decided it _was_ the coffee and nodded, pushing away the notion of asking if she was okay.

"It wasn't a problem. My…uh…pleasure."

"Still…thank you," she said, smiling at him again. "It was really nice to see you again, Detective."

"Oh. Right…um…yes. Thanks." He stared at her for a moment, uncertain – had she put an emphasis on 'really' or was that just his imagination? Probably the latter, he figured. She was acting _strange_, but this case was wrapped up with a nice pretty bow and if he was lucky he could get out of the building soon. He gave her a polite smile and left, heading upstairs, pausing only to sign something Miller shoved at him, and made tracks for the doors, hoping to get past Vick without being noticed.

"Detective Lassiter, a moment please?"

He stopped, shoulders sagging, exhaling wearily, before turning around to face Chief Vick, who only shook her head, looking amused.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to make you stay. I want you to take the rest of the week off, okay…plus the weekend. You look…burned out. And stay out of the coffee, if you can."

It was Tuesday. She was giving him the _rest of the week off_. No work. No papers. No stupid cat burglars, no mendacious thieving fake psychics, no murderers or rapists. Just a Clint Eastwood marathon on TV and maybe he would sleep late (all the way to six thirty!) and sit around and read or listen to his collection of increasingly odd music – O'Hara had been bewildered, once, to find his CD of 'Mischief With Mozart' ('A comical combat with the classical'), then had borrowed it and came to work the next day humming _Peer Gynt Panther_. Add that to Led Zeppelin, ELO, Johnny Cash, and Frank Sinatra and it was no wonder his neighbors were giving him a colder shoulder than normal.

They simply had no taste. Particularly the Farrows and their creepy little kid, who seemed to watch a lot of _Elmo's World_. Carlton's only appreciation of that particular show was a song parody thereof, by Weird Al Yankovic, called _Elmo's Got a Gun_. He had played it for O'Hara one day, during a stakeout, and she had nearly wet her pants.

"Okay," he finally said, trying to look disgruntled, because he didn't want Vick to think he was losing his edge. "Fine. I'll do that. A week. Off."

"Right. See you next Monday."

"Yep." He nodded and left before she could get a chance to change her mind. Rushing down the steps, he almost collided with Spencer and Guster, both of whom grinned at him in their empty-headed puppy dog please-look-at-us way.

"Lassie! Where ya headed? Can we come? Can we, can we, can we?" Spencer asked, bouncing up and down.

"Not unless you want your bodies to be found in an aquifer," Lassiter answered, and headed to his car.

* * *

He was bored.

It was Wednesday morning. He had nothing to do. The kitchen counters were so clean one could perform surgery on them. The refrigerator had been meticulously cleansed of any demonic creatures that had been born of Chinese takeout and old leftovers. Anything outdated had been thrown away. Some pizza rolls that were a day past their sell-by had been consumed last night because he had, indeed, been feeling lucky. He had scrubbed the bathtub and the showers, done the laundry, contemplated planting something in the windowboxes on the balcony railings, and had watched _High Noon_ at three in the morning.

Time management was not one of Carlton's strengths. He tended to want to do everything as soon as possible, because God only knew when that bullet with his name on it could…

No, wait. Stop that. That sweater vest-wearing therapist (who looked too much like Hank Azaria for comfort, really) of his had told him to stop thinking in such morbid/paranoid terms. To give time management a try and try to space things out a little, to rest, to relax, to watch a freaking _cartoon_ sometimes if that would help. A cartoon. Like what, _Penguins of Madagascar_? The therapist had looked amused and suggested he give that one a try. It had a good mixture of comedy and violence, after all.

Carlton Lassiter would never admit to sitting down on Saturday mornings and watching DVR'ed episodes of that series. He definitely could identify with Skipper, who he had to admit was a bit Lassiterish in his paranoia, determination and impatience, and like Skipper, Carlton would _never_ admit to an injury of any kind, to the point of claiming he was double jointed while a broken limb _squeaked_. King Julien was definitely Spencer, which he supposed meant that Maurice was Guster, or perhaps Mort when the poor schmuck was trying to flirt with girls (and usually just creeping them out). O'Hara was Marlene, or possibly Private, and so who was Kowalski? Henry? He didn't even know where to start in comparing Rico to anybody he knew, except maybe the Cajun assistant coach in _The Waterboy_.

So he liked that show. So what? It was rather amusing. Occupying. Or something. He turned the television on, found _How It's Made_ and learned how dollhouse furniture was made.

He would never have thought it involved that much _glue_.

Obviously, he knew he needed a woman. Particularly at three in the morning, when he couldn't sleep and just wanted to hear another heartbeat in the house and a warm, soft body beside him in bed. It wasn't just _sex_…though God knew it was a big part of it. It was companionship. Someone to talk to, to listen to, to think about, to come home to. To make meals for, to lie down next to, to laugh with…hell, even to argue with. Just to _be_ with. To belong to. He didn't belong to anybody. Never had, really, not even when he had been married and wanted to belong and tried to _make_ himself belong, and he had never felt as though he had ever really _belonged_ to anyone, though that was clearly an incorrect term, but what other term was there to convey the idea? If he could belong to someone, wouldn't they also belong to him, so long as it was by mutual consent? It wasn't as though he had any inclination toward tying someone up and keeping them in the basement, after all, and he certainly wouldn't want a woman who felt _obligated_ to stay.

Okay. So it was Wednesday, and he had nothing to do but wallow in maudlin self-pity and loneliness, which was nonproductive at best. Finally, overcome with boredom and the loneliness he usually just felt ashamed of, he dug through his CDs and albums until he found Willie Nelson's version of _Midnight Rider_, with its stirring opening guitar and deep, resonating thuds, and sat back, relaxing tensely.

_I've got to run to keep from hiding. I'm bound to keep on ridin'. And I've got one more silver dollar. I ain't gonna let 'em catch me, no. I ain't gonna let 'em catch the midnight rider…_

"Yeah, well, you didn't have me after you, now did you, Willie?" he asked the hi-fi as he dozed off in spite of his clenched fists. Tension could be so tiring.

* * *

"Oh my…look at that!" Shawn nudged Gus as they watched the statuesque blonde glide into the station. She was wearing a simple blue speckledy summer dress, a pair of expensive sunglasses and a purse that probably cost as much as it would take to feed a village in Africa.

"That's…hey, that's that woman from the museum…Sophie something…" Gus said, looking delighted. The two young men, lounging around at Juliet's and Henry's desks, respectively, got up and ambled over to greet her. "Miss Bridgewell!" Gus called, and Shawn waved at her as he bounced over.

She looked them over for a moment, and Shawn wondered if she remembered them at all. Finally, she nodded politely and held her purse in front, expression partially hidden by her Calvin Klein shades. She pulled them off. "Mr Spencer, Mr Guster…it's been a while. I haven't seen you since the fine arts section of the museum blew up a few weeks ago."

She had gloriously aquamarine eyes, and both young men paused for a moment to stare in rapt appreciation. Add that to silky blonde hair, honey-touched skin and a healthy, elegant figure, and she was definitely way beyond revenue.

"Oh…heh…right," Shawn nodded at last.

"I believe you were instrumental in helping someone steal a few valuable paintings at the time?" she said, raising one smooth blonde eyebrow.

"Uh…well, no, that…that wasn't really _our_ fault, exactly…we didn't actually help. We just…failed to…uh…hinder."

"Never mind. I was looking for someone."

Shawn grinned. "Well, lucky you, then! You've found him!"

"Um, no. I haven't. I was looking one of the detectives."

"I _am_ a detective," Shawn said, trying again, turning on his most charming mudshark smile.

"_Detective_ isn't a word I would use to describe you, Mr Spencer. Thank you anyway."

She peered around Shawn and spotted Juliet dropping into her seat, wincing a little because of her sunburned backside. "Detective O'Hara?" Sophie sidestepped Shawn and moved past them. Juliet turned in her chair and looked at the museum curator, who smiled broadly at her. "I'm not sure you remember me, but I was hoping you could…er…help me out a bit."

"Oh?" Juliet shoved her bag of orange candy slices into her drawer and locked it, hoping Shawn hadn't seen them.

"Yes. I was…er…looking for your partner."

"Detective Lassiter? Oh…he's off for the rest of the week."

"He is? Oh. Well…damn…"

"Do you need help with an investigation? A theft? A murder? Did you lose any articles of clothing?" Shawn asked, sidling up to Sophie again, grinning hopefully at her. She looked down at him from her slightly superior height and Juliet couldn't help but note a degree of _disgust_ on the other woman's face. As if she had found some small, repulsive creature on the bottom of her shoe.

"Shawn, why are you here? There's no investigations going on and there's no news film crews around. Go home," Juliet interjected, but the fake psychic ignored her and continued stand there, staring goggle-eyed at Sophie.

"None of the above, thank you, Mr Spencer. Can you tell me when he'll be back?" Sophie asked, looking at Juliet again and trying to politely put some distance between herself and Shawn, whom she thought smelled like Cheetos.

"He'll be back…right now…" Juliet said, bending to the side a little when she saw Carlton striding into the station, dressed in jeans, a plaid shirt and scuffed old boots. He removed his sunglasses and looked toward the front desk, where Gloria was giving him a stink eye. Undeterred, he stalked to her and prepared for battle.

"Just picking up some documents, Gloria," he said in only a very slightly tight voice.

The solid, hard-looking woman behind the desk nodded, then handed him a stack of messages. "The DA called this morning. Plus you left all these notes for me to try and decipher. Care to interpret?"

She enjoyed doing this to Lassiter. When he was at his most stressed, Gloria the Desk Nazi would haul out a stack of hand-written notes and hold them out to him, face completely deadpan, often saying – while he was on the phone with some enraged falsely accused suspect (enraged because Spencer had accused him of a crime and proceeded to eat everything in his refrigerator) or when he was trying to work through a complicated lead – "What about this?" with a triumphant gleam in her eyes.

So far, the head detective had maintained his cool in spite of Gloria's little ambushes, but Juliet suspected that one day he would lose his temper and those notes, and maybe even Gloria, would be reduced to confetti.

He snatched the stack out of her hand. "Oh, darn! I was _purposefully_ writing in Tamil again! Naughty me. I'll just take these all home and do translations!" He shuffled the papers irritably and turned toward the file cabinets.

Sophie stepped a little closer to Carlton, who didn't see her at all until he almost bumped into her. "Oh. Uh…Miss…Miss…Bridgewater?" He still looked annoyed, but at his least his expression softened a little. _A little._

"Bridge_well_," she said. "I was wondering if I could speak with you, Detective."

"Oh, God, please don't tell me there's been another heist," he said, looking weary.

"Um…no. It's more of a…uh…private matter. Is there a place where we could speak alone?"

He eyed her suspiciously, but finally nodded and gestured toward one of the conference rooms. Sophie smiled and went in ahead of him, and he followed, pulling the door closed behind him. Shawn immediately went to the door and pressed his ear against it.

* * *

"So, uh…what's this about, Miss Bridgewell?" He settled back against the conference table, watching her as she pushed her hair back in a completely female 'I've got it all under control' way.

"Sophie. You can call me Sophie."

"Um…okay. What can I do for you?"

"Well, see, the museum is opening a new exhibition on ancient weaponry, and I understand you're something of an expert on the subject and I thought perhaps you would be interested in…in…" She took a deep breath. "See, we're having kind of an opening shindig type of thing. A party not just for the exhibit, but also for the entire museum. To raise some money for the general upkeep thereof, as well as raising some money for the Annetta C. Turnipseed Fund."

"What the hell is that?" he asked, looking appalled.

"I have no idea," she said, shrugging. "The museum director is in charge of that part of the event."

"Maybe she's trying to raise money to pay for a name change."

Sophie actually laughed. _Laughed_.

That made something twist in Lassiter's stomach. He swallowed nervously. He didn't make women laugh, unless they were laughing _at_ him. But her laugh had been genuine. His hackles went up immediately – she had an angle. She _wanted something of him_. Probably some part of his soul, he thought bitterly. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"So what does this have to do with me?"

"Well, I understand you're an expert on early-to-mid nineteenth century firearms."

"I have a more than passing interest, that's all. I'm not an expert." He crossed his arms, defenses safely up, archers in the battlements, waiting for orders to fire and send her reeling back, quitting the field in terror.

"Oh. Anyway. I was wondering if perhaps you would like to come to the opening."

His eyes narrowed even more.

"Why?" he asked. The arrows were pointed directly at her forehead. Catapults were being dragged out and prepared, ready to start a fast, hard offense until she cut her losses and _ran_, like all the others.

"Why? As my…escort."

He stared at her, momentarily caught off guard, the archers falling back, unprepared for such an opening assault. He regrouped quickly and fixed her with a cold glare, allowing his natural inclination toward anger come up front (a big, badly wounded but vicious straight-shooting, sarcastic and bitter archer, with a lot of scars). "What is this, some kind of joke? O'Hara put you up to this? Or Spencer? Is that it? A joke, at Lassie's expense?"

"Wh-what? No, this isn't a joke. No one put me up to anything. I'm asking you to be my date Friday night for the museum's exhibit opening. End of story." She stared at him, confusion and no small amount of hurt on her pretty face. "And…_Lassie_? Isn't your name Lassiter?"

Carlton frowned at her, having seen that artfully devised expression before, on other women, and he wasn't buying it.

"So I'm supposed to believe you're asking me out? On a date?"

"Yes. I am," she ground out, starting to get annoyed, but apparently undeterred by his defenses.

Carlton glanced at the door and stepped around her, grabbing the handle and shoving the door out, hard, and feeling gratified when he heard the thump and Spencer yowl "Ouchkabibble! My _nose_!" He turned back to Sophie. "When is this shindig supposed to be again?"

"Friday night. Unless, of course, you're still thinking I've got some kind of ulterior motive…"

"Everybody does," he said, defiant but bewildered. The archers were utterly confused and not sure what to do.

"Not everybody, Detective. You just seem like a nice man and I figured you would be interested in the exhibition, as it's about a subject you know a lot _about_."

A nice man? He looked around the room. No one ever called him _nice_. The defenders were standing around the battlements, mumbling amongst themselves, in complete disarray. What kind of assault was this? What next? Flowers and perfume? Where were the damned flaming arrows? Carlton studied her, eyes narrowing again. "So…this isn't a joke?"

"No. It's not a joke!" she said. "Listen, I've always thought you were rather…nice. And…well, when we first met, a few years ago, I was involved with someone else but that's been over a while and I've already done the rebound thing and did a bit of therapy, too, because the jackass I was dating cheated on me and I kept making excuses for his assitude, like it was _my_ fault he was stupid and thought scruples was Russian money and morals were things you painted on walls, and slept with my freaking _sister_…"

"Catch your breath. You look like you're about to faint. And…nice?" he squawked. "_Nice_?"

"Yes! I always thought you were nice, and then when I saw you again yesterday, I kind of recalled that you seemed…well…anyway, I just thought the exhibit would be neutral ground for…a date," she said, exasperated. "What, you're not nice?"

"I'm the devil's spawn," he said, his defenses scrambling for one last show of strength. "At least nineteen people that I know of would love to kill me. Including my ex-father-in-law."

"What a bunch of blarney!" she laughed. She had pretty little freckles across her nose. Long, graceful neck. Lovely skin. Slender, toned body. Why, again, was he putting up the defenses and being all Snappy McParanoid?

"I…uh…well, I did kiss the Blarney Stone when I was nineteen," he said, shrugging, mesmerized by those freckles and her aquamarine eyes. The archers were scrabbling around now, shrieking for orders and getting nothing. He didn't care any more. One of them was flipping him the bird as he ran away, defeated.

"Don't you have to practically hang upside down to do that?"

"Is there any other way?" he asked, raising one dark eyebrow. "And I admit, I was drunk at the time."

She smiled, amused. "So…is it a date, Detective?"

"Uh…" He scratched the back of his ear, totally flummoxed. He was the _last_ man any woman asked out. He wasn't charming, he wasn't nice, he wasn't even good-looking. There _had_ to be an angle here. There had to be…but he was also so damned tired of being lonely, and eating expensive food off silver trays and drinking champagne for one night, while in the company of an attractive woman, couldn't be that bad. "O-okay," he finally said. "Yes."

"Good. You can pick me up at six o'clock. We'll have dinner before the opening. It's just pate and foie gras and other rather icky nibbly stuff, with champagne to keep everything interesting, but the exhibits are also locked up in bullet proof glass cases, so there'll be no drunken attempts at firing the thirteenth century iron crossbow, but then it weighs two hundred pounds and must have been used by some demented descendant of Goliath," she said, handing him a card. "That's my address and phone number, and my e-mail, too." She looked up at him, and he drew in his breath, still mesmerized by her unusually-colored eyes. "It's black tie, by the way. Do you have a tuxedo?"

"Dear Lord, no," he said, shaking his head and clutching her card. This had to be some kind of bizarre _dream_. "Are you…I mean…are you sure about this? I mean…I…I don't have any socia-…"

"I know we'll have a very good time," she said firmly. "You can tell me all about catapults and ancient germ warfare."

"They're kind of lethal," he said, nodding. "Crossbows, I mean. And awkward to handle. More people died from accidents trying to handle them than from actually _shooting_ them." Suddenly, terror gripped him and he had to swallow the cold lump of fear caught in his throat. "I won't be charming, you know," he said at last. "I lack charm. I have none whatsoever. I'll offend half the people there, and terrify the rest."

"_Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain_," she said tartly. "That's from the Bible. Means that most cute, charming people are generally vapid and egotistical and frankly ought to be shot…and really, cute lasts about five minutes anyway. Then cute just becomes annoying."

"Tell me about it," he muttered, looking down at her card.

"Exactly. I will see you at six o'clock on Friday, Detective," she said. She looked him up and down, her eyes matching her smile in warmth. "I suspect you'll fill out a tuxedo very…nicely."

When she had gone, he ran a hand through his hair and needed to sit down, he was so confused. "_What the hell?_"


	2. Chapter 2

I own nothing. TPTB own everything. I'm only playing around with an idea and I finally came up with a good case for Carlton and Juliet to investigate the other night, so that will be in the next chapter, I think.

* * *

"Mr Spencer, I cannot begin to fathom why you would think that giving me _flowers_ would make me any less upset with you."

Chief Vick shook her head, amazed at the temerity of Shawn Spencer. The psychic had caused her a full days' worth of apologizing to wrongfully accused citizens, spin-doctoring to an amused media…and one hell of headache, all because he had accused three different people of a particularly brutal murder before he had finally hit on the fourth, correct, man. Even worse, it had been the man Lassiter and O'Hara had initially targeted as the suspect, to Spencer's scorn ("How could Lassie be right?" had been Spencer's excuse), and the murderer had fled to Colorado.

That meant sending the already weary head detective and a pair of surly U.S. Marshals to Denver to collect the man and drag him back to Santa Barbara. Carlton was currently at his desk, having downed _three_ Excedrins, his phone set to direct voicemail and an interesting facial tic starting to plague him. The flight back from Denver had been extremely bumpy and he had actually tossed up his lunch on the tarmac when he had staggered off the plane.

And it was only three o'clock in the afternoon.

"They're pretty flowers," Shawn said, attempting to bat his eyelashes at her.

"They're from the flower beds in front of the station!" she said, aghast, when she recognized them. "Good God, Mr Spencer, does it ever stop?" She shoved the bouquet of flowers back into his hands. Just then, Carlton stepped into the office, holding the files on the Worthington case. He handed them to her, and before she could say anything, he turned away, face ashen, blue eyes almost colorless from exhaustion.

"I've been coming in here for seven freakin' years and you never gave me any damned flowers," she heard the irascible detective grumble as he closed the door behind him. She sighed and sat down.

"I'm really sorry," Shawn finally said. "Really…I am!"

"And one of our officers reported to me that you wanted him to _withhold evidence _from Detectives Lassiter and O'Hara." she said, watching Lassiter stalk to his desk and sit down. She glared at Shawn, anger rising. He was clutching the bouquet, as if prepared to use it as a weapon of self-defense if necessary.

"Uh…er…well…I was conducting a more…um…effective investig-…"

"Effective? How? Wasting time, putting lives in danger, and just generally being a smarmy attention-seeking little twit? Why in the name of _God_ would you want to do that?" Vick fumed at him. "What kind of idiotic, self-aggrandizing, empty-headed jackass would ever want to _withhold_ information from the police, particularly when said idiotic self-aggrandizing empty-headed jackass is a _consultant _for the police? What, do you think you're running investigations, Mr Spencer? You thought you were in charge? I wouldn't put you in charge of a rock! Remember this, Mr Spencer…_you work for us, _not the other way around! _You are not in charge of investigations_! Write. It. Down. Hell, write it on your forehead…though sometimes, I wonder if you can even _read_!" She handed a marker to Guster, who held it away from himself as if it were a rabid ferret.

"I…uh…" Shawn looked at Gus, who pursed his lips and looked increasingly nervous.

"You listen to me, and listen very carefully: next time I hear of you pulling a stunt like that, much less trying to get any police officer to be a party to it, I will _personally_ put you in front of one of the targets at the firing range, got it?"

"Yes…" Shawn nodded, looking properly contrite, though at this point, Vick figured it might well just be a stomachache. The little twerp had eaten everything in Paul Worthington's refrigerator, after all. Earlier that day, she had seriously hoped Worthington was into fugu and had left some in there that was improperly prepared. Now, she was just _mad_. Mad that her officers had been endangered. Mad because the SBPD's reputation had been compromised, and mad because her head detective currently looked like he was on the verge of a what could only be optimistically called 'an event'. He was sitting at his desk, rubbing his temples, eyes closed. O'Hara was holding an icepack to the back of his neck, speaking soothingly to him. She could have sworn she heard the younger detective say 'I know you want to kill him, but you're not allowed to. It's still against the law. Sometimes, it's a stupid law, yes, and I know exceptions _ought_ to be made, but…there you are…'

"Yes _what_?" Vick snapped, her outrage still not completely abated.

"Yes, ma'am!" Shawn said, and would have saluted her if Gus hadn't warned him to refrain, as it would have obviously been too much.

"Do you realize you could have gotten someone killed?" she snarled, her anger regaining its strength when she glanced down at the report. Officer Renfrew had been shot at, and it was only fortunate that Worthington couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn (he had chopped his victim up with an axe). But one of _her_ officers had been endangered by _Spencer's_ idiocy and need to conduct his own more 'effective' investigation – for which he was _not_ going to be paid. "No, of course not. Except that if someone had gotten killed, that might have taken media attention away from you while we held a funeral for a slain officer of the _law_! Who would have left behind a wife and three small children! Now get out! Do not appear at this station until you are _called_, if in fact we ever call you again! Show up here before that and I will have you arrested! Get out of my sight. You smell like a giant bag of sour cream and onion Doritos, and it's making me _sick_!"

Shawn and Gus beat a hasty retreat from the office and skittered out into the hallway, where they saw Juliet heading toward them, looking harried. "Hey! Jules!"

"My name is _Juliet_," she told him, for about the millionth time as she continued walking, rapidly, down the hall. "And you smell like…well…raise your hand if 'ew'."

"Oh. Right. Juliet. Right. Sorry. So what's up with Lassie?" Shawn asked, nodding toward the Bullpen, shaking off Vick's rage as if it were just a few annoying little droplets of rainwater. Gus, however, still looked shaken, and was still holding the marker Vick had given him.

"Lassiter," she said, still walking, with the psychic and his partner trying to keep up.

"Whatever. What's up with him? That woman from the museum was chatting him up yesterday, for a long time – in the conference room." Shawn rubbed his nose, glad it hadn't actually been broken when Lassiter had shoved the door into his face.

"As I understand it – and correct me if I'm wrong Shawn – that's between Carlton and Miss Bridgewell. It's like, you know, _private_. Something you only seem to think applies to yourself."

"Aw, c'mon. Lassi…ter surely told you about it."

"Not a word," she said, sounding a little put out about that, and outpaced them to the doors leading to booking. That was an area to which they had zero access, since they had 'accidentally' let a convenience store robber loose. It had only been because of Lassiter recognizing the guy that he had been tackled and hauled back in before he had gotten far.

Shawn's shoulders sagged. He wasn't getting anywhere, and he suspected that if Vick saw him slink past her office toward the Bullpen, he might very well get shot. He decided it was best to just go back to his office and wait for further developments.

* * *

Carlton's headache didn't fade away until he was ordered to go home by Chief Vick, and after a nice hot shower and a shot of Jack, he felt a little better. He had an appointment with a freaking _tailor_ at four o'clock, to get fitted for a tuxedo, which would be ready for him Friday morning. Right now, though, he was going to lie down and die for a little while. When he and the grouchy Marshals had landed at the airport that morning, he had lost his breakfast – with Worthington still attached to his wrist with handcuffs and looking none to happy about it – on the tarmac and had ridden back to the station with a damp paper towel on his forehead, the Marshals finally looking sympathetic and Worthington sitting as far away from him as possible.

The guy could cut up a woman with an axe and feed her parts through a wood chipper and not even blink. Sit him next to a sick, exhausted cop and he goes all girlyman. Typical.

He turned the TV on and watched _Little House On the Prairie _for about five minutes, until he was so depressed he was contemplating suicide, and turned it off for his own good. Hardship, grief, loss, sorrow, Mrs Olsen…was life ever good for those people? Plus Michael Landon bursting into tears at the drop of a hat ("Charles, Laura got an A on her report on the major exports of Japan!" "_Waaaaahhhh_!"), and perky little buck-toothed girls in gingham dresses and droughts and floods and locusts and it was a bit _much_.

What had him most unsettled, of course – aside from having to be touched by a total stranger while getting fitted for his tuxedo – was the fact that he had a date Friday night. Two days from now. He was thinking seriously of going online and reading up on manners and what modern women wanted ("To be treated like perfect princesses while we treat you like crap!" appeared to be the general consensus, from what he could tell). Instead, he sat back on the couch before finally deciding to just go for a walk and try to settle himself down a little.

* * *

Juliet O'Hara liked to eat at a little cantina near the beach, partly because the food was so good and partly because she liked the fact that it was largely undiscovered – her bubbly "Everybody knows about it!" explanation to Carlton notwithstanding, which had gotten her the Eyeroll of Mild Scorn. She could eat her meal in peace and just sit at the table, watching the water roll in and the sun melt into the Pacific. She was finishing off her chicken and cheese burrito when she looked up and saw Sophie Morriss Bridgewell coming up the steps onto the restaurant patio.

"Oh…hi, Detective," Sophie gave her a little wave and came over, looking a little uncertain.

"Oh, go ahead and sit. I'm not leaving for a while. Just…sitting and digesting now," Juliet smiled. This woman had been alone in the conference room with Carlton yesterday. For a long time. And had exited the room looking rather pleased.

Looking _pleased_. Good God, what had they done in there? It wasn't as if Carlton was going to have a go at a woman he barely knew (he barely left female _friends_ touch him, after all), but just the same…she knew he was lonely. And attractive. Sophie was apparently unattached and attractive, and one plus one equals two and there was a conference table in there and…

Calm down, she told herself and smiled at Sophie as she perused the menu.

Juliet knew several women at the station who were interested in Carlton. Why not? He was handsome, in a Cary Grant-meets-Gregory Peck kind of way, with those glorious blue eyes and that interesting nose and that lean, utterly masculine build and…and…damn. She struggled to regain her composure and focus on Sophie, pushing away that foolish jealousy she had been feeling since yesterday afternoon. It was about territory, that was all. _Territory_. Plus a natural inclination toward protecting Carlton, because as tough and iron-willed as he was, there was still a lot of vulnerability in that man, and in his lonely state he might…

"This is a nice place," Sophie said, after ordering a tamale plate (_So she doesn't go freaky about calories..the bitch…)_. "I come here sometimes, too. Nice food, very quiet, and I like to watch the swimmers. I can always tell if someone is peeing in the ocean."

Juliet almost coughed up her iced tea and covered her mouth, eyes watering as she remembered holding 'He Just Killed Nemo!' contests with Carlton as they ate their lunch. She didn't know how, but he could always tell if someone was 'making his contribution to climate change', and she would be laughing so hard she couldn't finish her fried ice cream. The fact that Carlton did not wade out into the surf to arrest said Nemo-killers was a true testament to how far he had come in the past few years. When she had first met him, she had realized he only ate lunch at the beach to watch for crime. Now, to her great delight, these days, he was watching for _comedy_.

Of course, that didn't stop him from being aware of anyone that looked suspicious. Guys wearing hoodies and baggy pants were always 'persons of interest', and she had lost count of the number of times he had chased down and tackled purse snatchers on the beach. He was a remarkably fast runner, for his age.

"I was just wondering," Sophie said, interrupting Juliet's thoughts. "Er…well, I understand you're Detective Lassiter's partner…right?"

"Yes. Almost seven years now," Juliet smiled, nodding.

"Then you know him pretty well? Can you…um…tell me what his likes and dislikes are? Something I should be careful about?"

Juilet eyed Sophie for a moment, feeling that unsettling jealousy rising again. No, that was _ridiculous_. Sophie seemed really nice, and Carlton had come so far – he _deserved_ to be happy and to have someone to take care of. He was that kind of guy – he was programmed to be a guardian, and even if that made him a little chauvinistic sometimes, in the long run, it was really rather sweet to see Carlton's gallant side.

He was no Prince Charming, but then again Prince Charming had been a dink who she doubted could open a bottle of Dr Pepper, much less face down a violent criminal and not even blink. Carlton might not bring a girl flowers, but he would make sure the kitchen sink never leaked (hers didn't, because of him) and that the roof wasn't loaded down with leaves (hers wasn't, even though she could tell he was a little uneasy up there). And God forbid anyone should threaten her (or cop a feel), because within seconds they would be on the ground and in excruciating pain.

Carlton was _practical_. Besides, if he was going to give a woman flowers, she figured he'd rather have grown them himself, in his own garden. Cut flowers were impractical. A pot of begonias or verbena would be more suitable, in his mind, she was sure.

"I guess I just want to make sure I…do everything right. I mean, a first date is always the clincher, isn't it?" Sophie went on. Juliet swallowed. _They're going on a date? A date? Dear God in heaven, who is going to protect him? He won't know what to do!_

"He's…he's really kind of shy," Juliet finally offered. "I guess you noticed that."

"Yes. I noticed that when I met him a few years ago. The other guy – the psychic – was doing pushups and trying to impress me. I was looking at Detective Lassiter's _eyes_."

"They are…um…pretty remarkable," Juliet agreed cautiously. "And he…uh…I remember him liking you, back then. He said something about you, at some point." Juliet twisted a lock of her hair around her finger, remembering how she had _resented_ Carlton finding Sophie attractive then, while he hadn't noticed that she had changed her hair three times in the past week. She knew that Carlton had, at the time, still been in the emotionally wrenching throes of his divorce, but surely he could have noticed…

"Oh? Really?" Sophie looked curious. "Well. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about Friday night. I mean, I know he's a little rough around the edges, but pour that guy into a tuxedo and…well…yum."

Juliet managed a little ghost of a smile, not liking that statement at all, even if it was fairly innocent and completely female. It was sort of a feminine version of locker-room gossip, after all, and nothing to get offended about, but then again, this was _Carlton_. Carlton, whose eyes would narrow when guys flirted with her, and who only seemed confused and defensive when women flirted with him. He would deny the flirting had even happened, in fact. For all the progress he had made since she had known him, he was still shy, insecure and had some self-esteem issues.

Well, a lot, actually.

She looked at Sophie, with her aquamarine eyes and _warmth_ and swallowed her own pride. This was for Carlton, not herself. _He_ had earned the right to happiness, and if Sophie was The One, then Juliet would determine to tamp down her own carefully repressed feelings and encourage him to pursue it.

If she wasn't The One, though, and she hurt her Carlton, Juliet would have no compunction whatsoever about killing Sophie of the Three Names in a manner that Stalin himself would find disturbing.

Because _nobody_ was allowed to hurt Carlton Lassiter. Not while Juliet O'Hara was still breathing.

"He's very shy," Juliet said again. "All that gruffness just covers it up. He grumbles and growls, but think of him as kind of like a big, mean-looking, tough guard dog that will rip a burglar to shreds and then lets the kids pull his tail and try to ride him around like a pony. He's…um…very quiet. One of the quietest people you'll ever know, and it takes a lot to get him to talk. You know how some people have nothing to say and then they say it? Well, he's the opposite. If he has nothing to say, he keeps his mouth shut, unless Shawn is baiting him, and that's only when he reaches the limit of his patience, and Shawn _loves_ to provoke him. Mainly because Shawn is a thirteen-year old who loves to rattle cages. When Carlton does say something, it's best to listen, because whatever he's saying is _important_."

Sophie nodded.

"He likes Clint Eastwood movies and guns and Civil War history. But you'd be surprised to know that he's also a great cook and makes amazing cupcakes with homemade icing, and that he's very curious about the world around him. He likes horses and the outdoors and fishing. He's not very social, but he does have good manners and can be very polite…but again, he's not social. He's very neat, but not as OCD as he used to be, and he nearly has a nervous breakdown if he's late to anything, or if you're late or make him late."

Sophie smiled. "I like punctuality, too. And horses are cool," she finally said. "I can tolerate fishing, I think. The worms, not so much, but I can do fishing and camping, or hiking."

"Good," Juliet said, ignoring the pain that wrenched her heart. "Then I think you two will get along just fine." God. Why can't she be a cold little bitch, like his ex-wife? Why can't she give off 'man-eater' vibes?

Why in hell does she have to be so damned _nice_?

* * *

He was becoming frantic.

The tailor was measuring his inside leg and seemed to be lingering down there a bit too long for Carlton's comfort, and finally Carlton looked down at the odd little man and put on his best glower, as his Glock was locked up in his trunk.

"Hey. Why don't you tell me what I'm _thinkin'_?"

"Ah aim surry, sor. Lait me izzue mah apaloagies," the little man said. He had a strange German-Chinese-Lithuanian accent that made Carlton feel vaguely dizzy, trying to keep track of dipthongs and the real meanings of mispronounced words. "Bella! De eenside laig aiz…" and he went off in an incomprehensible series of words that sounded Earthling, but that was perhaps a matter of debate. A tall, thin woman with a strange hairstyle that reminded him of Moe from _The Three Stooges_ emerged from behind a curtain and came at him with a piece of chalk and a grim expression. He instinctively lurched away from her and wished again that he had his Glock. But not even he had suspected firearms would be necessary at a _tailors_'.

While Bella attempted to draw marks on his tuxedo pants, without his permission, he snatched up his cell phone and dialed O'Hara.

"Carlton? What's wrong?" she asked, immediately sounding concerned. He heard ocean waves and seagulls and figured she was at that cantina they had found a few months ago.

"I'm being attacked by Moe's demented sister and she's got _chalk_, and a strange little man keeps looking at my crotch and I don't think I can take much more!" he ground out, dodging away from Moette and keeping an eye on Mr Humphrey's strange little cousin from somewhere in the Baltic States by way of Bangkok. "Bring your Glock!" He didn't care that he sounded terrified. Mainly because frankly, he _was_ terrified. A meltdown was in the offing, actually.

"Carlton, calm down. You're at the tailor's, right? It's what they _do_. They come at you with tape measures and chalk and spend a lot of time…er…_belowdecks_ and just generally make you feel ashamed and weird, but I've heard that that particular tailor is really good and you'll come out looking great. Shell-shocked, but great."

"No, this little dude and his assistant…they're creepin' me out. Get out here. Now!"

She made an exasperated sound, and he heard muffled conversation, then she came back online. "Okay, I'll be there in five minutes. Do your breathing exercises."

"For God's sake, O'Hara! I'm not in labor! I'm being…vio…_violated_!"

* * *

Okay, it had to be illegal.

Juliet paused into the tailor's doorway and stared, wide-eyed, at her partner, who was making frantic, angry gestures at a little man and a strange-looking woman with Moe's hairdo.

Carlton was wearing a black tuxedo, perfectly cut to his physique, which had very subtle silver threads in the lapels. The bow-tie also was threaded with silver, and he was wearing expensive-looking Italian shoes to further enhance the devastating effect. His blue eyes were blazing with rage, and he was holding a cummerbund in one hand, and she supposed it was a good thing he had left his Glock in the trunk of his car (he had _promised_ her he would), because it would have been in his other hand.

He looked _amazing_. James-Bond-eat-your-heart-out _amazing_.

Swallowing and pulling herself back together, Juliet stepped into the shop and made her way to Carlton, trying to think of some way to soothe him. There were a few options, and the ones that came immediately to her mind were:

Kiss him

Hug him

Squeeze him

Pinch him

Ogle him

Undress him

Throw him onto a bed and climb aboa-…

Wait, _what_…? She squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them again, Carlton was glaring at her, the very picture of indignant outrage. "You said five minutes!" he hissed. "Five minutes! That's an eternity when Senor Touchysqueezy here is grabbing my package!"

"He grabbed your…wait, he did what?" She looked at Senor Touchysqueezy, who huffed in indignation.

"Ai deed nawt grahb heez pockadge!" he snapped.

"You…um…what and the huh?" Juliet stared at him, bewildered, and looked helplessly at Carlton.

"If he was Spanish, I'd just say he was from Barcelona," Carlton said, giving Moette a cold glare as she tried to move in to take another measurement. "I think he's claiming innocence, but I know what he was _touching_ and it was further northwards than seemed entirely appropriate."

"Oh, Carlton, come on," Juliet finally said, trying to be reasonable. "I'm sure he didn't mean any offense…"

He fixed her with an angry blue glare, and Juliet shrugged helplessly. Nonetheless, she gave the little man a hard look and raised her eyebrow at Moette, who had enough sense to look penitent.

It was going to be an interesting afternoon.

* * *

Juliet finally took a seat and watched as the odd little man and his assistant fussed over Carlton, discussing his hair, coloring, height, physique and eye color with great animation, all while the nervous detective refused to wear the cummerbund, declared Touchysqueezy's suggestion of _tails_ on the tuxedo jacket to be utterly ridiculous, and snarled at Moette (whose name, Juliet discovered, was actually Bella) when she suggested a tophat and gloves. "Right! Just give me a monocle and a cane and I'd be Mr Peanut!"

Juliet finally determined that Bella spoke Italian, but Senor Touchysqueezy's language was perhaps Romulan, because just when she had his nationality pinned down, he would switch to some other language and she would be bewildered again. He reminded her a lot of Martin Short's character in _Father of the Bride_, only weirder and more frightening. No wonder Carlton's nerves were shot. He was breathing hard, his eyes were wide and extra-blue, and he was blushing.

_Why didn't I just let myself _**see**_ him before now?_ she asked herself. _Why? We're adults. I know he is aware of me. I know he _likes _me and respects me, because he's always been respectful. He's not a nice man sometimes, but he has always been and will always be a _good_ man, and they're hard to find. Very hard. And now, here he is, about to go on a date with another woman, and he'll be looking like that. Sophie will have to be blind and stupid and asexual to not want to grab him and show him the true meaning of the word 'discovery'. _

_Worse yet, Sophie Morris Bridgewell was _not_ stupid, because she liked Carlton, too._

Juliet sighed.

It had taken this day, with Carlton standing there in a tuxedo and looking sexy and murderous at once, to make Juliet finally let herself admit it. There was, however, one serious problem accompanying that admission:

She was too late.

Cookies to anybody who recognizes the _Blackadder, Are You Being Served? _and _Fawlty Towers_ references.


	3. Chapter 3

My entire timeline for this series got screwed up royally. I do that. Timelines are my Waterloo. So let's just pretend it's all been stretched out a bit and move these doggies along, shall we? Lassiter was off a week, came back, got asked out, and it's a few days later. There. Seriously, people - never set your clocks by me. I'd have you late for everything!

(Thanks, Loafer :D )

(OK. I had to repost this thing twice. Typos drive me nuts. Whatever typos are left, I'm leaving them now because I'm already driving myself crazy)

* * *

Having endured the alterations of the tuxedo without having a full-blown meltdown, Carlton and Juliet left the tailor's shop and walked out to his Fusion, and he wearily leaned against the door, rubbing his eyes. He was back in his normal street clothes – that is, a regular suit and tie. Grey, with a green tie that did so much for his eyes.

"That was _traumatic_," he finally said. "In the please-kill-me-now sense of the word."

"Oh, c'mon, it wasn't that bad. You're just not used to being…um…handled."

"Hell, I can do with being handled. Been seven damned years, after all. I'd just rather be _woman_handled, instead of _man_handled, thank you," he said, forgetting, in his weariness and frazzled nerves, to be guarded. When he realized what he had just said, however, he flinched and scrabbled for his keys. "I'll…uh…see you…t-tomorrow," he stammered. Juliet managed a tight little smile in return, not wishing to embarrass him further, and watched him put on his shades, get in his car and drive away.

* * *

Carlton parked the Crown Vic in front of the elegant Tudor mansion, glancing around at the beautiful grounds. Juliet was reading through the preliminary – and rather sketchy – report on the murder at the estate, and her brow furrowed a little. "Man found nude in a garden maze, stabbed through the heart with some kind of gardening device."

"A trowel?" Carlton asked, getting out. She got out, too, and they looked around, taking in the sweet smell of lilacs and freshly cut grass. The entire estate – about forty acres of gardens and pools surrounded by dense woods – was relaxing and quiet, the only sounds being birdsong and splashing water. Carlton briefly eyed a nude cherub peeing into a reflecting pool, before turning back to look at her.

Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember the definition of the word. "A…small shovel? No, it seems to indicate a spike. Several stab wounds."

"Hm." He shrugged. "I don't see anybody around. Guess we'll go inside…" He gestured toward the front door and they walked up flagstone stones of the mansion to the huge double doors. Carlton peered around for a doorbell, but found none. Juliet finally spotted a thick velvet rope, and pulled it tentatively.

"It either rings a bell or flushes the toilet," she said, and she was gratified to see Carlton smile a little. He was distracted, and she knew why: tonight was his date with Sophie, and if _he_ wasn't nervous about it, she certainly was. What if Sophie really did fall for him? Why shouldn't she, after all? Carlton had a lot of faults, obviously, but his positive traits were just as numerous and did a lot to balance out the negative ones, and she knew that every woman – including herself – who had passed him up was a stupid, blind _fool_.

The door opened, while Juliet and Carlton were both turned toward the gardens again, regarding the idyllic scenery in silence. Flowers were everywhere, both in pots and in large beds that naturally led the eye toward reflecting pools and fountains. The heady perfume of the blooms was distracting and a little intoxicating, and he hazarded a brief glance at O'Hara, who was staring at the gardens with a soft smile on her pretty face. He heard the door open behind him and pulled himself out of his thoughts and turned to accept greetings and let out a horrified _yelp_ing sound that made Juliet turn around, turn pink and squeak in horror.

The man was _naked_.

"Oh my…_God_!" she gasped. "Carlton…Carlton, his…his weinenschpritzer is showing!"

"What the hell is this?" Carlton snapped. "I…I mean…not _that_, obviously. I have one of my-…er, I mean…we…this…why are you _naked_?"

"This is a clothing optional resort," the man told them loftily. He looked vaguely like Harry Shearer, though frankly Carlton didn't know Harry Shearer _that_ well, and had no interest in knowing more, and so he opted against making any further comparisons. Because, really, it was too much think about and now he could never watch _The Simpsons_ again.

"You had a murder here, I believe," Carlton finally managed to say, keeping his gaze upward. "And I would suggest you take the option to put some clothes on."

"And your name is?" the man asked, extending a hand.

"Detective Lassiter, and I don't do nude handshakes, thanks. This is my partner, Detective O'Hara."

Juliet also declined to shake hands with the naked man. She was getting a little wild-eyed, though, and Carlton decided she shouldn't be forced to gaze at…_that_…any more, so he stepped in front of her. He heard her exhale and murmur of something like 'Dear God, help me'.

"The murder…?" Carlton reiterated.

"Yes. So horrible. Mr Blakely was stabbed to death in the garden maze. Really, it was terrible. The paramedics never had a chance at getting to him in time. I'll get Miss Claymore and she'll take you to the body – she has the maze memorized, thank goodness."

He turned and gestured for them to follow him inside. Juliet, still a bit shaky, managed to regain her composure a little. At least until Miss Claymore came bouncing out to them, all slender and pink and naked as the day she was born.

"Oh, Jesus…" Carlton said, running a hand over his face before making the sign of the Cross. "I…uh…mean…help us in this…this our time of…er…nake-…breas-…oh, hell…could you please put some clothes on, ma'am?"

"But nakedness is our natural state," Miss Claymore said in a bizarrely righteous tone, considering her state of undress.

"Listen, if that's the case, then the Catholic church has no reason to exist _what_soever!" Carlton snapped at her. "Put. Some. Clothes. On! We're opting for clothes, we're the police and we're here for a murder investigation _and we have_ _guns_, dammit!"

Huffing indignantly, Miss Claypool padded away. Naked Harry glared at Carlton until the detective cracked and had to turn away. That didn't help him at all – a group of nubile young women jogged by, wearing nothing but tennis shoes and cheerful smiles.

Juliet, still too rattled to be coherent, had put her shades back on and Carlton suspected she had her eyes closed. She murmured something that sounded like 'Your butter might be booking', but he _knew_ what she had said. He bit back a snicker and looked straight ahead, admiring the _hydrangeas_ instead of the bouncing nymphettes.

"I don't have any butter and I can't imagine why I would book it," he said out of the side of his mouth, watching but definitely not watching six cute little fannies and six pairs of breasts bounce by.

Okay, so he was a guy. All the wiring was normal. He liked to look at women, clothed or unclothed. Was there really anything wrong with that, in the long run?

She dropped her head into her hands and he knew she was giggling.

"Pull yourself together!" he hissed at her. "You're at a nudist resort!"

She was almost convulsed by then, even under Harry's naked glare, and had to lean against the door.

"I think we should call Spencer in on this one."

That set her off into full-scale laughter, hand over her mouth.

Finally, Miss Claymore reappeared. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but Carlton suspected she was going commando underneath them. Nevertheless, he gestured in the direction of the gardens, and she led them down the steps, across the courtyard and down some more steps to a rose bower-covered path that led to the maze. The scent of roses was heavy, and for the first time in his life Carlton had an overwhelming urge to just stop and smell the damned things. _Slow down. Relax. The guy's dead – he's in no hurry_.

He shook his head, clearing it, and shuffled along behind Juliet, his longer stride making him accidentally crowd her, which led to brief, alarming, contact. She glanced at him for a moment, eyebrows up, and he fought off a blush and muttered an apology.

Tall boxwoods created the complicated maze, and it didn't surprise Carlton at all that the paramedics hadn't had much chance, but when they finally got to the body – male, forty-something, about six feet, two hundred pounds, kind of pudgy, pale, flat on his back in the gravel in the center of the maze – he realized that no paramedic could have helped the man. A rough count showed seventeen stab wounds on the man's chest. He was as dead as the proverbial doornail.

"Wow," Juliet said. She walked around to the body's side and crouched down, using her little penlight (a birthday gift from Carlton) to look more closely at the wounds and _ignoring_ the fact that he was naked. "Blood spatter…almost none in _front_ of him," she pointed out. "None behind, either," she said, gesturing to toward the bushes on the other end of the circular clearing.

Carlton briefly inspected the rocks and bushes in front of where the victim had apparently been standing before he was stabbed. Miss Claypool, arms folded across her chest, was looking Carlton over, eyebrow lifted, and he fixed her with an icy glare.

"Was anyone suspicious seen around here at the time of death?" Carlton asked. He looked at the darkening puddles of blood around the body and guessed he had been dead around an hour or so.

"No. Just the usual people living or vacationing on the estate," Miss Claymore answered.

"I'll need everyone's name and specs," Carlton told her, without even looking up. He had found a few drops of blood to the left and right of where the murderer had likely been standing, and he turned around to study where and how the victim had fallen. Miss Claymore pulled out a cell phone and called someone, and Carlton tuned his ear to her conversation.

"Mr Cooper? We'll need the names of all the guests here at Sunnyside," she was saying.

"And Mr Cooper is?" Carlton asked, when she rang off.

"The owner of this resort. He'll be here soon."

"This guy have any enemies?" Carlton asked her, flipping open his notebook. Juliet went around looking for anything that seemed out of place, and finally looked at her partner. No bits of cloth, no pieces of paper, no dropped items, not even a footprint. The crime scene was clean, aside from the blood. It was pooling under the victim, and when Carlton finally went over to turn the body over a little, he was startled to see that at least three of the stab wounds had gone all the way through the body and blood was oozing out of his back from the wounds. "Big spike, and sharp, too. Or maybe a…sword?" Weird. Who would bring a sword to a nudist resort?

Then again, why would anybody bring anything to a nudist resort? What would be the point, exactly?

He checked the wounds, noting that they were all deep and jagged-looking, obviously applied to the victim with great anger and force, and he figured that only the first few had actually been fatal, while the rest were the result of the killer's frenzied rage. Overkill, indeed. At least three of the stab wounds were over the heart, and one or two had clearly pierced his lung.

Even now, after all these years, the brutality of some people still amazed Carlton. He wondered what he would do if and when he became callous to it all. Would he have to quit, or take an administrative job, riding a desk? He didn't _want_ to become callous, even though he was somewhat accustomed to seeing this. So far, this kind of vicious crime only made him more determined to hunt down a murderer and bring him to justice – he supposed that meant he wasn't callous, because otherwise he wouldn't care. He remembered Louis L'Amour saying that a man who took a 'sight to killing' was loco, and he supposed a detective who got used to bloody crime scenes was probably just as loco, if not more so.

"None that we know of," Miss Claymore answered. "He was a pretty nice man, but he mostly kept to himself. He imported diamonds."

"A nudist diamond importer," Juliet said darkly. "There's one Agatha Christie never came up with."

"Sounds more Poirot than Christie, actually," Carlton told her with just the slightest of smiles.

"This was his first visit here," Claymore told them. "No one here really knew him well. He was kind of a loner. He didn't join in any of the activities."

Carlton and Juliet looked at each other, and finally Carlton cleared his throat, not sure he wanted to ask the question, because the answer was probably terrifying. "Activities?"

"Volleyball, tennis, golf, croquet, shuffleboard…"

"Dear God," Carlton muttered.

"We also played charades, Scruples, board games and the like, and we have a murder mystery game every weekend. Mr Blakely was always invited, of course, but he never joined."

"How long was he here?" Juliet asked, trying to imagine a nude murder mystery game and frankly found it impossible to even _consider_. Or maybe she just wasn't broad-minded enough.

"Three weeks."

"Did he mention any personal problems?" Carlton asked, trying to put the mental image of someone pantomiming Madame Bovary in the nude out of his mind, because he was already getting a headache. Come-hither look. Rolling hips. _Ovaries_…

"He didn't say much of anything to anyone. He stayed in his room most of the time. He jogged every morning."

"How long was he usually gone?" Juliet choked out, looking at her partner, who was apparently still stuck with trying to imagine nude charades.

"He was usually gone about…an hour or so, I think. I'm always setting up for breakfast when he'd leave, and that was probably about…oh…seven o'clock, and he was back at around eight on most days. I only remember because that was his routine, every morning, from the day he arrived here."

Carlton nodded. "Thank you, Miss Claymore." He looked up and saw the CSU's coming, and stepped aside, going over his preliminary findings with the team leader, Anison, while Juliet made a call. Carlton finished talking with the CSU's and went to her side.

"Who're you calling?"

"Shawn. Maybe he will…uh…find something."

"Before or after he freaks out and faints?"

* * *

Considering they had to wait around several minutes for Spencer and Guster to arrive on the estate (the details of which Juliet gave none, which confirmed to Carlton that she indeed had an _excellent_ sense of humor), the two detectives had little else to do but sit down on one of the stone benches and wait. The CSU's were busy gathering up every tiny smidgeon of evidence, which to an observer was about as interesting as watching cement dry, so they settled on safer topics of conversation.

Or they would have been safer, had Juliet been able to keep from blurting out the first question that came immediately to mind.

"Have you ever been naked in public?"

"Wh-what? No. Of course not. I'm not really into scaring people, actually."

"Oh come on, Carlton," Juliet laughed. "I doubt you'd _scare_ anybody."

"Traumatize, then?"

"No. Not that, either."

He cleared his throat and she caught something in the depths of those incredible blue eyes – shyness, embarrassment, and something she couldn't quite define.

"People probably think I'm like Richard Nixon – not entirely anatomically correct, y'know?" He did blush then, and looked away, toward the hydrangeas. "Robocop, or something. No actual human dimensions or emotions."

"If they think that, they're stupid," Juliet countered. "You're the most _human_ person I've ever known."

He looked at her, eyes narrowing a little. Leave it to Carlton to take a compliment as an insult. "In the _Animal Farm_ sense, or just…?"

"What I mean is, you're very…emotional. However much you want to be professional and by-the-book, you're driven almost entirely by your emotions. Besides that, robots don't recognize that there's any problems they need to fix."

"Unless the problems are purely mechanical," he nodded, still struggling to come to grips with what she was saying to him.

She smiled softly. "No. Not that. You've worked hard to improve yourself. To become a better man, and let me tell you, it's working. When I first met you, you were basically a mess. Just barely keeping your head above water, and so _angry_ and hurt. Now, you're swimming along just fine, and seem a lot less…well, you seem more balanced, and let me tell you…a lot of women are responding to that. Sophie, for instance, and Clair in booking and Charlotte in records and…"

"Stop that," he told her firmly, and sighed when she just gave him that 'you can't argue with me' look. "I'm trying to keep from mistaking my career for my life, that's for sure," he said, dismissing her compliments – because that meant she saw him as something other than Carlton Lassiter, Head Detective and All Around Hard Ass - and focusing on what he knew was safest to discuss. "I want to have a life, you know? A real life. Even if I have to live it alone, at least it will be a _life_. And however much you may think I should, I am not asking Clair in booking on a date. She's a vegan. Bursts into tears at the sight of a carrot that didn't die of natural causes."

She laughed. "Who says you have to live it alone? Don't have you have a date tonight?" she asked, trying to sound lighter than she felt.

"Please. People like me aren't meant to mate for life. Too screwed up, too much of a screw-up, too set in my ways, too grouchy…just…too…" He shrugged, gesturing at himself with his hands. "Plus, I leave the toilet seat up and whiskers in the sink and I growl too much. No woman's gonna put up with that. I'm sure Sophie and I will have a fairly pleasant date and while we're having coffee at some place near the museum, she'll get a fake phone call from a girlfriend, will go to the ladies' room, climb out the window, and never be seen or heard from again."

She was about to bawl him out for saying such a totally ludicrous thing when Shawn and Gus came rattling into the crime scene, both a little breathless and arguing about directional dyslexia.

"Shawn got us lost in this damned maze," Gus said, looking annoyed. "Some psychic."

"Psychics don't deal with mazes," Shawn said loftily.

"They deal with puzzles!" Gus ground out.

"Mazes aren't puzzles," Shawn told him loftily. "They're…uh…logical ch-challenges and why is that man _naked_?" he asked, pointing toward the body of the murder victim.

"Lots of reasons, and it's rather interesting that you weren't first concerned with why he's _dead_." Carlton said with a shrug. "Go see if the 'spirits' will tell you anything, and try to avoid licking the body."

Shawn shuffled forward, Gus right behind him, and the two young men looked around the crime scene for a few moments, muttering to each other. Shawn came back looking a little miffed, with Gus looking a little uneasy.

"Anything?" Carlton asked coolly.

"Cleanest damned crime scene I've ever seen and _**OH MY GOD**_!" Shawn squawked, taking several steps backwards and almost colliding with one of the CSU's. Carlton and Juliet turned around to see three naked people coming straight toward them.

Gus, wheezing, skittered around behind Shawn and for a moment, Carlton worried the poor guy would try to climb the fake psychic. "His…his…they're…they're all…"

"Yes," Carlton nodded, glancing at the approaching nudists. "Their weinenschpritzers are showing."

* * *

Carlton glanced down at Sophie's card, took a deep breath, and got out of his Fusion. He felt like he was approaching a battlefield unarmed and unprepared, and quite frankly, he was scared out of his mind.

He had never worn a tuxedo to anything, except his wedding, and how well had that turned out? Even the reception had been disastrous, with his mother and Victoria's mother getting into a fight that had almost ended with the two combatants wrestling in the wedding cake, and Irving had been overheard muttering about his poor sweet girl marrying a low-class Irish mick from a low-class Irish mick family. Things had gone down hill from there, right on into his marriage and through the separation and the divorce.

Victoria was seeing a proctologist now, from what he had heard last. He wondered what Irving called _him_.

He went up the steps to the door to her upscale loft apartment, paused, screwed up all his courage, and rang the doorbell. He was straightening his lapels and trying to swat away his terror – what was he, sixteen? – when the door opened and Sophie stood staring at him.

"Uh…hi," he finally managed.

"Oh my…_God_…" she whispered. "You shouldn't be legal. Seriously."

"What? What's wrong?" he asked, anxiety gripping him. Five seconds in and he'd already blown it! Of course!

"Nothing…it's just…you…uh… Sorry. I'm sorry. Come on in!" She smiled at him, which eased his nerves a little, but not a lot. "I'm not quite ready. Sorry…I know you're kind of a stickler about punctuality."

"Wh-who told you that?" he asked, stepping into her foyer. He looked around. Marble floor, checkerboard pattern. Crystal chandelier. Wrought-iron winding staircase. A print of Botticelli's _Birth of Venus_ on the wall directly opposite the door. Some vaguely familiar opera piece was playing. _La Boheme_? He turned his attention back to Sophie, who looked stunning in a midnight blue cocktail dress that emphasized every feminine curve and brought out the aquamarine of her eyes.

"Um…a good guess," she smiled. "Would you like something to drink? No alcohol, of course – you're driving. But I've got coffee, tea, water…"

"Water, please," he nodded.

"Come on then. Kitchen's this way."

He followed her down a short corridor and made a left to the open kitchen. She opened a side-by-side fridge and extracted a blue glass bottle and handed it to him. He whacked the cap off with one quick bang against the granite countertop and took a swig, then noticed she was staring at him, holding up a bottle-opener.

"Oh…uh…sorry."

"I've never seen anyone do that before," she told him, putting the bottle opener back in its drawer.

"Right." He glanced at the countertop and was relieved to see no visible damage. "I learned it from an old Irish bartender."

"I guess you're more a beer drinker than wine and champagne?"

"Never was into either," he said with a shrug.

"You look really nice," she said, out of nowhere.

"Huh? Oh. Uh…thanks. You look…nice…too."

"Thank you."

He drank down the rest of the ice-cold water and tossed the bottle into a trashcan in front of the sink. "You said you weren't quite ready?"

"Oh. Right." She pushed her hair back from her face, trying to appear calm and in-control, but he sensed she was nervous. Damn right she should be, he thought. She was going to a fancy-dress shindig with an Irish mick who didn't know Dom Perignon from Dos Equis and hadn't a clue what to do with a shrimp fork. It was a wonder she hadn't called to cancel, frankly.

Sophie managed a nervous little smile. "I'll be back in two shakes, I promise. I just got stuck at work, see, and then traffic was _awful_ and I spilled nail polish all over the bathroom floor and…well, I'm talking too much I'll…I'll be right back, okay? Go sit in the living room."

"I was told not to sit," he told her. "That weird little dude at the…um…whatayacallit…said I wasn't allowed to sit, 'cause it'd wrinkle the pants and ruin the crease."

"To hell with him. Sit down if you like," she said, laughing a little. "I'll be right back down." She turned and practically ran from the room, and he heard her clattering up the stairs.

"See?" he told the refrigerator. "I drive them all off. I'll be home in time for Craig Ferguson, I'm sure."


	4. Chapter 4

Okay. So if you're a Shawn Worshipper, _why_ are you reading this fic? I don't watch the show for Shawn Spencer. I watch it for the other characters. I hear Gregory House is rather unlikable, too, by the way, yet people watch that show, too. I don't. Mainly because I don't like medical dramas any more. ::shrug::

It's Derby Day! Who's your pick?

I just couldn't resist the homeless cats bit. From one of my favorite episodes of "Frasier". :)

* * *

"So…uh…what should I really expect here?" Carlton asked Sophie as they walked up the steps to the entrance of the museum.

"Oh…the usual. Dirty jokes about mummies. A long-winded tale of Egyptian intrigue from Mr Lazenby, and an even longer story from his wife about how the story is entirely false and actually is just a mild redo of _The Mummy_ with Brendan Fraser. Watch out for Mrs Falconer – she's a vicious cow whose views are to the left of Stalin, and like most Stalinists, she's loaded. The others are wild cards, and I'm not entirely sure which members of the staff will be here tonight to keep them from hurting anybody. There's a silent auction for the Turnipseed fund, for which several items will be offered."

"What is the fund for again?" he asked.

"I still couldn't find out. The director wasn't forthcoming."

He opened the door for her, she paused (again) and seemed to study him and he could have sworn she _smelled_ him before she stepped through the door. He had shaved and showered before leaving home, hadn't he? The usual cologne – nothing offensive. He knew a few guys who tried Brut and Polo and even Calvin Klein's line of whatever ridiculously titled cologne was out this year (they all smelled like despair and death from heroin addiction, to him) and one who even tried Aqua Velva, to the point of being able to bring down a Brahma bull at ten paces, but his own cologne had always been subtle. He had even queried O'Hara about it once and she had gotten a strange look in her eyes and said it was 'nice', so he could only assume Sophie just didn't like it. Oh well. He'd standup upwind of her.

His instincts kicked right into high gear the second he saw the crowd. Men in tuxedos. Women in evening wear. Waiters skulking about, bearing trays of glasses of champagne and revolting gray stuff on crackers. No one looked terribly shifty, but he knew the upper crust and the rich (the two groups weren't necessarily mutually exclusive) could be a nasty bunch of buggers, so he made a note to check his wallet from time to time.

Several tables were set up with various things to make a bid on, and while Sophie was being greeted by some of her friends from the museum, he took a quick gander at one of the items being offered and was intrigued to see that it was a jade box from the Han Dynasty. Looking around, he spotted other items being offered to raise money for the elusive cause of Ms Turnipseed: a barbecue grill (really?), some 'ancient' pottery that looked like it might have been made by a kindergartener (complete with a painted turkey or dog, depending on one's imagination), a painting or two of winsome-looking silk-clad English aristocrats, some useless objects d'art, old books, and other crap. He was looking at some other stuff on the block – including a 'Dinner With a Poet Laureate' – when Sophie touched his arm. "Carlton, I'd like you to meet some people."

For the next several nerve-wracking minutes, he was introduced to various people, including the deputy mayor (whom he knew and considered a wanker of the highest magnitude), a couple of judges and a woman Sophie told him was a world-famous artist.

He eyed the woman, who was bald as a cueball and wearing a poncho that looked like a horse blanket that hadn't been washed since last used to keep Lashkari warm. He had a feeling she didn't bathe very often, and the cold look she gave him made him even less interested in shaking hands anyway. "So…er…what do you paint?" he asked, as Sophie was pulled away to confer with some female friends.

"Garbage," she told him, in a voice that smacked of a lifetime of alcoholism and three packs a day.

"Well, then, you're right in there with a lot of artists," he nodded. "Starting with Picasso, but I believe he had vision problems."

"No. I paint _garbage_. I gather up garbage and paint still lifes of it."

"Oh. How creepy. Nice to meet you."

"Creepy? You think that's creepy?" she asked him.

"Well, I could have said 'stupid', but I was trying to be polite."

Sophie, back at his side again, looked between him and the woman with wide eyes. "Carlton, let's go look at some of the displays, shall we?" She gave his arm a gentle tug, and he let her lead him away. At a display of ancient Chinese armor, she whispered. "You said that to _Thomasina Grant_?"

"Who?"

"The bald woman in the poncho!"

"Who paints garbage…"

Sophie stared at him. "Nobody _ever_ challenges her. What else did you say?"

"I think I said something about creepy and Picasso and vision impairment. I might have been impertinent. Should I be afraid?"

"No! You might get a prize for courage, though. She's been divorced about…oh…six times and two of her husbands haven't been seen in a long time. She says one is in Portugal and the other is in Venezuela, but we're not totally buying it…"

"Henry the eighth's demented sister, then," he nodded, snatching up a glass of champagne as it went by. He took a sip and only winced a little. "You know, I'd bid on the grill, but I'm not sure where the money would go and _what the hell are they doing here_?"

Sophie turned around to see Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster bustle into the room, both wearing (slightly ill-fitting) tuxedos and looking around with interest.

"I'm sure the museum director invited them. He finds them amusing…though he once told me he only finds them amusing in the way one finds a particularly stupid puppy 'amusing'. Ignore them."

"That's like ignoring a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at night and won't freakin' leave you alone," Carlton muttered. "Beelzebug."

Sophie giggled. "Well…then we'll go someplace else."

"What, and miss the auction? I want to see what it's raising money for."

Shawn and Gus apparently hadn't seen Carlton or Sophie yet, because they made their way over to the table displaying a Ming vase and the card advertising lunch with the poet laureate. Edging just a little closer, Carlton could hear them arguing.

"I've never had lunch with a laureate," Shawn said, peering at the card.

"Do you even know what a laureate is?" Gus hissed.

"No, but if I have lunch with one, he's bound to tell me, right? And look, it's gonna be at Frisco's! The best Spanish eating in Santa Barbara."

"The _only_ Spanish restaurant in Santa Barbara," Gus told him.

"I'm gonna bid!" Shawn said, and scribbled his name down.

"You're such an idiot," Gus told him.

"Let's go find some food," Shawn chirped, and they were off. Carlton grabbed Sophie's arm and pulled her in the opposite direction of where the two younger men were headed, and she quickly directed him toward the Egyptian exhibit, which was on the other end of the building. He was actually pretty relieved to away from the crowd – he would never admit it, but crowds made him nervous, and not entirely in the paranoid way, either. A large group of people just gave him the willies for some reason.

In the room full of Egyptian geegaws and trinkets, he paused for a little while to sip his champagne and study what appeared to be a diorama depicting the building of the Sphinx. Sophie was strangely silent, and he turned back to look at her. "Uh…is everything okay?" he asked cautiously.

"Everything's fine," she said with a small smile, but she looked rather flushed, and he wondered if maybe she was running a fever. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

"It's been interesting so far. That woman in the poncho…I'm guessing she has a few minor arrests in the past few years? Mainly for getting caught digging through people's trash?"

Sophie laughed. "Yes. She's what they call a 'character' in these circles."

"In my circles, she's called 'suspect number three' in the lineup. I think I can handle going back for the auction, though." He held out his arm, and she took it, her fingers briefly touching his bicep.

"Do you work out?" she asked him, and he thought she sounded strangely breathless.

"Uh…not really. Just jog four miles every morning."

"So you keep fit?"

"I have to," he nodded. "Have to keep in shape."

"You look like you're very…um…fit."

He shrugged. "It's just…you know…necessary. Are you sure you're okay?"

She nodded. They were just re-entering the room where the ancient weaponry was being displayed when Shawn spotted them and, after staring at them with wide eyes, he grabbed Gus and dragged him over. "Lassiefrassie! Whatcha doin' here, man? Guard duty?"

"Actually, no," Sophie said, giving him a cold look. "He's with me."

"Oh, God…you poor girl. Here, let me rescue you. We'll throw olives into that blunderbuss thing over there…we'll have a ton of fun! Not like you really want to hang out with Deputy Dipstick here."

Sophie took a step back, into a silently seething Carlton. "I'll stay with _Carlton_, thank you."

"Can you not _divine_ that you're not exactly wanted here, Spencer?" Carlton finally asked, through clenched teeth.

"I hardly need to be a psychic – which I am – to see that she'd rather be elsewhere," Shawn snickered. "I mean, c'mon…it's not like you're her date, Lassie. Only way you can get a date is to shoot her up with tranquilizers and keep her in the basement." He grinned his best mudshark grin, expecting an affirmative response from Sophie but getting nothing but an icy glare from them both. Gus, at his side, picked up on entirely different vibes from Sophie and grabbed Shawn's arm.

"Shawn, c'mon, man…they're starting final bids on the lunch with the laureate."

Gus dragged a reluctant – and slightly bewildered and sputtering – Spencer away and Carlton grabbed another glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

"Sorry about that," Sophie said.

"You're apologizing? He's the one who ought to apologize. Not that he will. He never apologizes for anything. Breaking and entering. Illegal obtaining of information. Credit card fraud…taking credit for other people's work…stupid hair...it's all just fun and games for him…and I'm usually the one who has to clean up the mess afterwards."

"So basically, what you're saying is that he's an ass?" she asked. "You have to deal with him on a regular basis, right?"

"Almost every damned day," Carlton muttered. "And yes, 'ass' would be the appropriate description."

"Maybe you're the one who needs a tranquilizer!"

* * *

The bidding for the lunch with the laureate picked up a good deal, and Shawn – in spite of Gus's protests and attempts to stop him from signing any more – kept bidding. When the whistle blew, Shawn Spencer had spent five hundred dollars (of Gus's money) to have lunch with a poet laureate. From Poland. Who spoke not a single word of English. Stanislas Grabowski shook Shawn's hand and seemed very enthusiastic about his upcoming meal with the younger man, who looked totally taken aback.

Sophie, sipping champagne, managed to cover her laughter. "What will Shawn do when he finds out Stanislas just broke up with his boyfriend and is looking for someone else to…uh…_polka_ with?"

Carlton's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "I don't know, but I sure wish I could be there to see."

"The translator will have to go along. I'm sure he can be persuaded to provide a…uh…_blow-by-blow_ account of the evening's festivities."

When the auction ended, with all items sold and Stanislas' arm still around Shawn's now trembling shoulders, the auctioneer smiled out at the crowd. "What a rousing auction that was, and I'm sure all the bidders will be delighted to know that because of your generosity to the Annetta C Turnipseed Fund, there will be a lot fewer homeless cats wandering the streets of Santa Barbara!"

Shawn looked even more taken aback, and Gus looked downright disgruntled when he had spent that much money on a bunch of cats.

Carlton, seeing Spencer's expression and Stanislas's obvious delight, just couldn't stand it any more. "This is too funny. I gotta go get my camera. I'll call it SpenStan…the Beginning."

* * *

The party was winding down. Carlton rather enjoyed just people-watching, plus there were the exhibits, which were fairly educational, he supposed. The Spanish warship cannons were on the small side, but he was duly impressed with the display of ancient Irish battle swords and axes, along with suits of arms, shields (one featuring, strangely enough, arms that looked a lot like his own family's) and other implements of destruction. Carlton wondered why there were no whiskey bottles included with the display, but he supposed the museum wasn't keen on offending anybody.

Sophie sidled up beside him and studied the display of scary-looking implements. "You're of Irish extraction, right?"

"Almost full-blooded," he nodded. "Dash of Cherokee, a drop of German and a small smidgen of Italian from some County Meath ancestor who did a Holy Land pilgrimage and stopped in Rome for a snack."

"Do you know that almost all Irish people are descended from kings?" she asked him.

"Yep. Then again, there were kings all over Ireland at various points. You couldn't swing a dead cat over your head without hittin' one. You'd be wandering through Connemara and bump into a swarthy guy wearing a coronet, and he'd say, 'Hi, I'm the king, this is my wife, the queen, and this is our dog Prince. I'm king from that tree to that rock to that cow. Cow moves a bit, my kingdom either grows or shrinks…' And then, being Irish, he'd have at you with his broadsword. Even then, only in Ireland could the phrase 'acceptable level of violence' be considered _encouraging_."

She laughed, brushing her hair back in that strangely flirtatious manner. She had been doing that all night – behaving in a flirtatious manner, which was totally confusing. He did a quick mental check of how many glasses of champagne she had consumed, but could only account for three, which was hardly enough to make a woman drunk enough to flirt with _him_, and besides she had eaten a bit of the pate and the other scary stuff on the trays. Maybe she had accidentally OD'd on allergy pills.

"So…uh…are you ready to go, or do you need to hobnob with any more of the local swells?"

She looked around, and he was as startled as Sophie to realize that they were alone in the room. The party was over, and the lights were low.

"No swells remain," she said with a smile, and she stepped just a little closer.

Definitely allergy pills. But she smelled nice. Chanel No. 5, obviously, and something else. _Femaleness_. He hadn't had a chance to stand so close to femaleness in a long time, except O'Hara, and she was off limits.

"Right. Well. Let's go then. We'll stop somewhere for coffee, if you like."

"Yes. That would be fine." She smiled at him again. "That would be wonderful, in fact."

* * *

They sat at a little table by the windows of a quiet all-night café, hands wrapped around cups of coffee. He got a decaf, figuring he ought to give sleep a try tonight, and she startled him by ordering a latte. Maybe she had paperwork to go over, he thought, and stared down into the depths of his cup.

"I really had a very nice time, Carlton," she said.

He stared at her, bewildered. "You…did? Oh. Well. That's good…"

Her cell phone chirped, and he had to swallow a miserable sigh. The 'Rescue Me' call. Happened all the time, for him. He knew the score – he wasn't stupid. A woman like Sophie Bridgewell wasn't going to waste her time on a grouchy guy living on a civil servant's salary.

"Excuse me. I…I'll be right back," she said, looking at the caller ID. "Dammit…I'm so sorry, Carlton…"

"Yeah," he nodded, taking a sip of the bitter coffee. She got up and strode away, her posture indicating aggravation, and he sat back in his seat. "Don't tear your dress in the window."

* * *

"What? What do you want?" Sophie snapped into the phone, once she was safely in the ladies' room.

"I was just giving you the 'Rescue Me' call!" hissed the woman on the other end of the phone.

"I don't _want_ the damned Rescue Me call, you idiot! I told you I wouldn't want it this time!"

"You really don't? Listen, I've read about this guy. I figured you'd be ready to split by now."

"I'm _not_!"

"Really? What's going on?"

"We're having coffee and he's…he's…oh my God, Joanie, he's got…the _bluest_ eyes I've ever seen, and his hands and feet and ears are big, and you know what that means…and he's taller than me even when I'm in heels, and he's lean and muscular and…" Sophie had to fan herself with a paper towel. "And you should see him in his tux…oh my _God_…silver and black hair…hooked nose…_Irish_…"

"You always did have a thing for Irishmen. Oh, and that hands and feet thing is just an urban legend. It's…oh…really?"

"_Really_. Not that that's all there is to it, but…my God, he's just so…and he's funny, too, and quiet and restrained and polite and he opens my car door for me and he doesn't take himself too seriously and even if he's not really _sweet_, exactly, he's a gentleman and God knows I've gone through my fair share of guys who were sweet and funny and cute but turned out to be complete jackasses. I have a pretty good feeling about this guy, Joanie. A really good feeling."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna play it by ear right now."

"Sophie, you can't be thinking of going to bed with a guy on the first date!"

"So what if I am thinking about it? What's wrong with thinking about it?"

"Well, if you do sleep with him, I want a blow-by-blow account tomorrow!"

"Honey, if I sleep with him, you won't hear from me until _Sunday_!"

* * *

He was going to give her nine minutes. He knew women often tended to go to the ladies' room in small herds, apparently to have discussions about the merits and deficiencies of their respective dates. One woman going to the ladies' room alone, after getting a phone call, meant that they were being given a chance to escape for their (horrible) date. He went over the events of this date and couldn't put his finger on anything he had done wrong, but then again that was based on _his_ perception of how things had gone, not hers. He had insulted a bald artist who painted pictures of garbage - check. He had snarled at Spencer, who was trying to up himself on his scale of stupid – check check. He had poked fun at his own semi-royal Irish ancestors (which he was allowed to do, as they were _his_ ancestors – nobody else was allowed to diss his kin) – check, check, check.

He admitted, he knew very little about women. Six years of (disastrous) marriage hadn't given him much more inside knowledge of the species. Reading _Cosmo_ also didn't help much, aside from endlessly idiotic articles about clothes, makeup, sex positions (most of which looked _painful_ and totally unrealistic), how to give a man a false sense of power, and faking orgasms. Reading _Cosmo_ made him feel like maybe he was spying on the enemy, but then again, he knew that many women seemed to view men as a race of alien robots that had to be destroyed.

Carlton glanced at his watch again, rubbed his temples, and got ready to call the waiter over to ask for the check when Sophie emerged from the ladies' room and came back, sitting down opposite him and giving him another of those smiles of hers. What was with this woman? She acted like she _liked_ him. She smiled at him a lot. She had come back from the ladies' room after receiving a phone call.

What in the name of Sweet Lady Justice was going on here? Yet again, he wanted to check her for a fever. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright, and she seemed kind of…trembly.

"Uh…are you okay?" he asked. Maybe she couldn't fit through the window. Or maybe she couldn't get it open. He supposed he could ask if she needed his help opening it, but that would be kind of stupid, now wouldn't it? 'Here, let me help you escape, all while I know you're escaping. Need a leg up?' Or maybe there wasn't a window…

She finally did something that totally threw him – she reached across the table and covered his hands with her own.

"Like I said before, I really had a good time, Carlton," she said.

"Oh. Uh…so did I." He had meant that. He hadn't felt as though he had been under any pressure to be anything other than himself. Which was strange enough in itself, since most people didn't like him when he was himself, much less anybody else.

"Really? Well, I'm glad to hear that. Um…" She chewed on her lip a moment. "Is there any chance you might be interested in doing this again? Maybe not a museum exhibit opening, but something you might enjoy? Maybe a movie or…I understand you like horses. Maybe we could go riding? I only ride English, by the way…"

"Mo-…ridi-…uh…wait, you want to do this again?"

"Yes. Of course. If you'd like, that is.

"I…would, yeah," he nodded.

"Good." She smiled. The waiter came back, and Carlton batted away her attempt at paying for her own coffee, and once that was settled, they walked out to the sidewalk and stood in the cool evening air, watching cars go by.

"It's a lovely night, isn't it?" she said. "The temperature finally went down. It was so hot last week."

"Yeah," he managed. He opened the passenger side door for Sophie, and she slid in gracefully. He took a quick, utterly male, glance at her legs and closed the door. So he hadn't bombed out after all. A rarity for him, and he couldn't help but feel as though there was hope for him after all.

* * *

"Would you like to come in for a minute?" Sophie asked. Carlton was bewildered – she sounded a little breathles. Again, he had to fight off that urge to check if she had a fever, because she looked flushed and a little…wild-eyed.

"Uh…okay."

She fumbled for the keys, finally managed to extract them from her tiny purse, and struggled for several moments to get the door unlocked. She finally accomplished that task, even though her hands were shaking, and he couldn't bear it any more.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm good!" she said brightly, stepping inside her loft. Carlton followed, glancing around. "Uh…would you like something to drink?"

"No thanks."

They stood, studying each other, for several moments in her little foyer. He was about to just go ahead and press his hand to her forehead, to see if she did have a fever.

"Listen," she finally said. "I don't do this very often. In fact, I've never done this before…but…uh…would you like to stay?"

His brow furrowed, and he looked around, utterly confused. "Huh?"

"To stay. Here. With me."

"H-here?" he stammered.

"Upstairs."

"Oh."

"In bed."

"Uh…"

"With me."

He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't find any actual words. He had never – not _once_ – been propositioned at this stage of date. Then again, he had never gotten to this stage of a first date before. By about now, he would be heading home to watch Craig Ferguson do a skit about Prince Charles and to wonder what the hell was wrong with him.

This had to be a joke. He looked around, for hidden cameras or people hiding behind something, but the only thing anyone could hide behind was a big Chinese vase featuring a peacock (no peacock feathers _in_ the vase, though, which would send him running, because peacock feathers were seriously bad luck), and he could have seen anyone skulking behind it holding a camera.

"Uh…are you…um…sure?"

Sophie answered his question by launching herself at him and kissing him – hard and hot. Her arms slid around his neck, she kicked the door shut and them pushed him against it. Her mouth was soft and sweet, and her tongue certainly wasn't prim and proper, and God help him, but he wasn't one to say no to having his shirt unbuttoned and the stupid bowtie undone and removed. When her hand moved down to undo his pants, he forgot all about hidden cameras, jokes and his own inhibitions – he switched positions, turning her around and pushing her – gently – against the solid door.

"Oh…yeah…" she whispered, hands in his hair, as he started unzipping her dress. "I can definitely learn how to ride…Western…"

* * *

Lashkari won the 1984 (inaugural) Breeders' Cup Turf. Nice racehorse, but total flop at stud.

_Beelzebug_ (bee-ell-zee-bug) is a Sniglet. Look it up.


	5. Chapter 5

Juliet was starting to get a little _worried_.

Her partner was never late. In fact, he _always_ beat her to crime scenes. She conceded that since this particular crime scene had been rather traumatic to both of them (naked dead man, naked butler, naked guide to said naked dead man by way of a missive from said naked butler; naked joggers with naked breasts bouncing around; naked Cupid peeing into a fountain, and finally Shawn and Gus's naked horror at the sight of so many naked people in one place at one time), he might be a little unwilling to put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, to get here, but even so he had no reason to be _late_.

Yet he was late.

When she had called his cell ten minutes ago, he had answered sounding a little…_breathless_. Even more, she could have sworn she had heard thumps in the background that didn't sound like anything his goldfish Maurice (a moving-in present from Buzz McNab) would make. His condo was only five minutes away from the nudist colony. So why would he be ten minutes late? It wasn't as though he would stop for a latte or something.

If she was late, he would loftily (with just a tiny spark of humor in his eyes) quote Lee: _Duty is the sublimest word in the English language_. Always do your duty, and never be found shirking the doing thereof, and that involved always being on time. He had drilled that into her head, hadn't he?

She had fought against every urge to ask him how his date with Sophie had gone, particularly since she had started to worry about what might happen if things went _right _(that is, utterly wrong). If he wanted to talk about it – which she suspected he wouldn't, poor guy – he would. It certainly wasn't as though he would volunteer details over the phone, after all, and really, it was probably too painful for him to talk about for a while yet.

In a few weeks, or maybe a few months, he might give her a vague story of how it all had gone, from the dead clown joke to the crayons to Sophie never coming back from the ladies' room and a brief recounting of Craig Ferguson's Prince Charles skit. She would be there to comfort, gently berate, and _listen_. Parse out the subtexts, counter his discouragement with compliments, and a carefully-worded remark that the woman who had passed him up wasn't looking deep enough at the _treasure_ sitting across from her, even if he was drawing a picture of a bullet-riddled dead clown, and really, Carlton…_crayons_?

Because that was the scenario Juliet could _handle_.

The blue Crown Vic finally pulled into the circular drive of the Tudor mansion, and he got out. He looked kind of strange, she thought, walking toward him. His hair was a little less _controlled_ that normal, and while he was wearing his usual sharp suit and tie, he seemed…_off_. Wild-eyed, and as she approached, she caught sight of what looked like…no, surely not…it couldn't be…

He had a _hickey_.

Don't. Look. At. The. Hickey.

She stared at the hickey. He pulled the collar of his shirt up just a little, desperate to cover it a little better, and gave her his patented 'Don't you dare ask me any questions!' look and turned toward the door, where the naked butler was standing, having apparently forgotten Carlton's tight-jawed dictum about being dressed next time they came to the mansion.

"Put your damned clothes on!" Carlton shouted at the man, who jerked, startled, before huffing and going back into the mansion.

"So…um…how are you…doing?" Juliet asked cautiously.

"Peachy with a side of keen, thanks," he nodded, stuffing his hands into his trenchcoat pockets and looking at everything but her. He was peering with far too much interest at some geraniums when the butler returned, wearing a tuxedo.

"You're late. You're never late. I've never beaten you to a crime scene in se-…"

"So what if I'm late? I had…uh…something I needed…to…er…do."

"Right."

Dear God, or maybe he had some_one_ to do.

Which frankly made Juliet feel sick to stomach. Carlton. Sophie. In a bed. Together. Doing…things. Yeah, like they'd be in bed discussing Chris Matthews' most recent embarrassing meltdown on MSNBC. No. No, Carlton and Sophie would be in bed doing…_It_. If that was the case, Juliet had no doubt whatsoever that Sophie was currently sitting in her office, smiling so happily she was making lightbulbs blow out.

The_ bitch_.

He looked up at the sky for a moment, and she could have sworn he was praying, then he turned his attention to the butler. "You called saying Mr Cooper was finally here? Why can't he come to the station?"

"He is a strict nudist, Detective," the butler informed him coolly as he opened the door and let them pass through. "He refuses to wear clothes. He figured it might be easier to conduct an interview here."

"Great. A strict nudist. Why is it we can never interview say, strict Methodists?" Carlton muttered.

"Then again, like them or not, most strict Methodists don't kill people. If everybody was a Methodist, or at least followed the most basic Judeo-Christian tenets, there'd be no murder and we'd be out of our jobs and would have to be accountants," Juliet countered, as they were lead down the hall and to a huge oak door. The butler knocked. "I admit it's a catch-twenty-two. I'm all for no more murders, but I'd go nuts as an accountant." She looked around the luxuriously furnished mansion. "I'm going to suspect none of his chairs are made of Corinthian leather."

"If they are, I suspect he has a lot of Band-Aids handy," Carlton nodded, and they entered when they heard "Come in!"

Mr Cooper – Dylan Cooper, of all things – was seated behind his desk, and when he started to stand up, Juliet made a gesture to him that indicated good manners were not, under these circumstances, really necessary or even actually welcome.

Cooper was a well-built man in his late thirties, good-looking and fit. He was seated in what looked like a _velvet-_lined chair. Juliet started thinking about _stains_, then cleared her throat and concentrated on being professional and not the fact that she was in a room with a naked man and another man she wished was naked.

Oh dear God, where had that come from?

Juliet O'Hara did not get _jealous_, and she had gotten past that silly-but-not-really-that-silly crush she had had on Carlton, which she had gotten shortly after having met him and taken a look at his damned blue eyes. His eyes, of course, weren't fair or his fault and neither were his hands or his expressive face or his irascible temper that covered a profoundly shy nature. She had gotten over wondering if his hair would feel silky against her fingers, or if she could smooth his almost constantly furrowed eyebrows, or if his mouth would be soft against her own or…

Wait, she was working. Focus! She was _over_ that!

She was going to find a photograph of Sophie Bridgewell, tack it to a target at the range, and _fire away_. Just so she could make it clear to herself that she was ever so very extremely absolutely yes-by-cracky _over_ having any kind of _thing_ for Carlton Lassiter.

Carlton, apparently relieved to be off his feet, sat down when Cooper motioned toward the chairs, and Juliet took a seat beside him, batting away her thoughts. She took in all kinds of mounted animals (had he killed them himself? While nude? Was there a segue into that question? Did one worry about ticks while hunting in the nude? What about sunburn? Wouldn't camouflage be a better idea, all around?), fine bronze sculptures in Art Deco style, a priceless Tiffany desk lamp, and various and sundry knick-knacks, including a small, beautiful porcelain statue of a horse that Juliet noted was labeled 'Minoru (1906-1917) – Winner, 1909 English Derby'.

"Nice statue," Carlton said, nodding at the horse.

"Thank you, it's a real favorite of mine. Nice hickey."

Carlton tugged his shirt collar upwards a little, settled a cold glare at Cooper, and launched.

"How well did you know the victim? Mr…John Blakely."

"He was a visitor to the estate. This is one of the few clothing-optional places in California, oddly enough. I mean, really, you'd think California would have more places like this, but…"

"Yes. We have far too many sensible, repressed people wandering about and doing that whole silly _voting_ thing," Carlton said icily. "Not everybody lives in L.A. and San Francisco, you know, and last I checked, they still have those pesky _rights_."

"Carlton," Juliet said, in a gently remonstrative tone. "Mr Cooper, we were told Mr Blakely was only here for about three weeks. Was he ever seen arguing with anyone, or at least looking upset?"

"No one is ever upset here," Cooper informed her. "This is one of the most relaxed places in California."

"I can't say as I find it relaxing. You might get a thrill out of seeing naked people flopping around, but it's not my cuppa," Carlton told him, voice still laced with ice.

Juliet glanced at her partner. Hadn't he seen _Sophie_ naked last night?

That was another of her annoyingly ill-timed little notions about Carlton – that he likely preferred making love with the lights on. As carefully controlled as he was, she liked to think that in the bedroom, he was more…relaxed.

Damn him. Damn him and Sophie. Damn Sophie in particular, for snatching Carlton up so quickly and apparently _effortlessly._

She noticed that her partner was looking at her knee. Which was bouncing. Fast. Cooper was looking at it, too, and she glanced at Minoru, who was sort of turned toward her, porcelain eyes practically staring at her bouncing knee.

She crossed her legs. Her foot started wiggling. What did she need next? A straightjacket?

"Anyway," Carlton said, turning his attention back to Cooper. "Was he ever seen talking to anyone?"

"No."

Juliet leaned forward. "No one at all? At this 'relaxing' place, he wasn't able to form a couple of friendships, maybe do a little…er…business while relaxing? I'm not sure how networking goes at a nudist resort, but I assume it's similar to the fully-clothed kind, except maybe there's more giggling involved."

"Plus the mystery weekends and Scruples," Carlton nodded. "What better ways are there to bond with others? Particularly if you're, you know, _naked_."

She glanced at her partner. He had leaned back in his chair, knees crossed, elegant in his sharp, dark suit, and she knew what he was thinking: there were definitely better ways to bond with someone while naked. _Damn_. Red tie. Fingers long and masculine, yet so very graceful and sure. He was studying the porcelain statue of Minoru, and finally leaned forward again.

"Did you know Mr Blakely very well, Mr Cooper?"

"I only barely knew him. He was put in contact with me only in regard to his desire to stay at a clothing optional resort."

"How many guests do you have at this…uh…resort right now?" Carlton asked.

"Approximately fifty," was the answer.

"What's the exact number?" Carlton, always the curious one, finally touched Minoru, turning him slightly so he wasn't staring at Juliet's still twitching foot. The horse was now staring at a Faberge pen and ink set.

"Fifty-four."

"We need all their specs. Family, friends, finances, romantic connections…pets."

"I'll do all I can to accommodate you, sir," Cooper nodded, and picked up his phone.

* * *

"Whole thing's hinky," Carlton said, shaking his head. They had stopped at a coffee bar, and he had insisted on paying for her drink. The barista had stared at him the entire time he'd been ordering, and got the change wrong. Three times. Carlton hadn't even snapped at her, which indicated a fairly decent mood. Juliet was sure it wasn't just the hickey that had the girl staring – his blue eyes were particularly _blue_ today. Any woman that stared at those eyes and failed to lose her train of thought clearly had some problems.

"Right," Juliet nodded. They walked out of the coffee bar, wincing in the bright sunshine. They put on their RayBans and headed toward the car.

"Remember that the naked maze-guide had the maze memorized?"

"Yes, I remember."

"If she had it memorized, then she would be able to go to the center of the maze and get back without any wrong turns and delays, right?" He settled his cerulean gaze on her. "Suspect number one?"

"I was thinking the same thing," Juliet said, grinning in spite of her mood. "But she said she barely knew him."

"People lie all the time, too."

"Granted."

"Speaking of liars, did Spencer regain his use of his somewhat limited language skills and give you any theories?"

"No. Last I saw him, he was still babbling and trying to get Gus to stop crying."

"Yeah, that's how he was last time I saw him, too," Carlton said, with an enigmatic grin. "Though that had more to do with a Polish poet than a bunch of naked people. But that's different from how he behaves on a day-to-day basis _how_?"

Juliet rolled her eyes. "He hasn't called me with any theories," she said.

"Huh." Carlton's phone chirped and he answered. "Hello? Hey. Um…probably about three…ish. Why? Oh. Right. Well, either a late lunch or an earlier dinner, I guess. Either suits me fine. Okay. Yeah, I'll see you there." He hung up and turned back to Juliet.

"Um…I guess your date with Sophie went well?"

He looked guarded, and finally nodded. "It went okay."

"Going out again tonight?"

"Yeah. Should I just do McDonald's or upgrade to Burger King?"

"Carlton…"

"Not that Burger King is much of an upgrade, I admit. That big-headed king guy seriously creeps me out, but then so does Ronald McDonald. Clowns freak me out. So it's either be creeped out or freaked out."

"You didn't do the dead clown story, did you?" she asked, getting into the Crown Vic.

He climbed in, buckled up and turned the engine on. "No. No dead clowns were discussed."

"Oh. Good." She swallowed a mouthful of coffee. "Um…so how did the…uh…date…go?"

"It went okay," he nodded, pulling out into traffic.

"You were late this morning," she finally said, hoping he would pick up on her unasked question and just _tell her_, for God's sake.

"Breakfast was okay, too," he finally said. "We…er…I got up a little…late."

Juliet couldn't drink the rest of her coffee. She put it in the cupholder and felt a powerful headache coming on. That was _so_ not the answer she was wanting to hear. She looked at her partner, catching his slight blush, and knew she would have to go down to the firing range today, just to calm down.

_You could have said something, you know_, her annoying Inner Voice scolded. _You could have made a move, years ago. He's finally moving on with his life, after having worked so hard, and you – if you really do care about him – will be happy for him and will be gracious to his new girlfriend, because that's the right the thing to do, you empty-headed little twit_.

"Oh shut up," she whispered to her Inner Voice.

"What?" Carlton looked at her, startled. They were stopped at a red light, and he was sipping his coffee.

"Nothing. It was nothing." She looked at her partner, then out the window.

_And you're going on about him being late?_

* * *

Minoru the racehorse – owned and bred by King Edward VII - was sold to the Russians a few years after the end of his racing career. He vanished during the Russian Revolution.


	6. Chapter 6

"And here I thought my day was going to be boring," Carlton said, leaning back in his chair and popping another Mike & Ike candy into his mouth. He read over the report from the CSU unit, and shook his head in amazement.

"What?" Juliet asked, stretching her neck a little in hopes over getting rid of the damned crick that had started in it last night, because she had slept wrong after a far-too-graphic nightmare about Carlton marrying Sophie. Complete with wedding (why were there bagpipers? Carlton was Irish, not Scottish) and babies with blue eyes and touchy tempers, with Carlton looking happy with another woman and Juliet seriously contemplating slashing her wrists or at least Sophie's tires. She had awakened in a cold sweat, having never before experienced a cold sweat and frankly hoping she never would again, because it sure didn't feel good.

Also, in the dream, Shawn had been dressed like Bobo the Clown and kept spraying people with seltzer water. Someone had finally shot him.

"CSU's found a couple of drops of blood that were not from the victim, but were definitely from a close relative of the victim."

"Really? So a relative killed him?"

"Looks like it." He slapped the folder shut. "I have to admit, I can't get this thought out of my head…"

"What thought?" she asked, coming over and picking up the folder, reading over the report.

"Ever see that movie, _Lizzie Borden Took an Axe_? Or is it _Lizzie Borden Had an Axe_?" He sat back for a moment, thinking, flipping around in his mental movie file until he finally hit on the right title: "_The Legend of Lizzie Borden_."

"Um…" She looked at him over the top of the folder and shrugged.

"No. I don't guess you're quite old enough, and maybe now I'm too old myself to remember. It had Elizabeth Montgomery in it – I remember that."

"Who?"

He rubbed his eyes. "From _Bewitched_?"

"That had Nicole Kidman," she scoffed. "And that doofus Will Ferrell."

"O'Hara…"

She giggled in spite of herself. They had had a long, somewhat heated discussion about Will Ferrell, not long after _Blades of Glory_ had come out. They had finally agreed that he was a doofus, Lassiter holding that view due to the man's politics ("He's made his bundle, and like all people of his stripe, he wants to make sure nobody else does"), and O'Hara because she thought he looked like a potato with a bad toupee.

"Anyway," he continued, exuding patience. "The theory in that movie was that Lizzie Borden did in fact kill her father, with an axe, and she did it while buck naked. Walked into his office and whacked him off, and the blood splatter…"

"…got on her," Juliet finished. "All she had to do was take a bath. No ruined clothes."

"Exactly."

Juliet stared at her partner, bewildered at what he was clearly considering.

"That was in the eighteen-nineties, wasn't it?"

"Can't remember now. Just that, at the time, forensic science was barely even in a fetal stage, so they knew nothing of blood splatter, and also at the time, the cops would never have combed through a female suspect's belongings – it was unthinkable, back then, to do such a thing. The jury even acquitted her _because_ she was a woman. Okay, mainly. For that time, with the way murder investigations ran, there was no really strong evidence against her – just circumstantial, and an all-male Victorian jury just wasn't going to see a woman hang…unless she was a Confederate sympathizer or something. I even read a book a few years ago about how it might have been her insane illegitimate half-brother that killed Andrew and whatsername Borden."

"Abby."

"Eh?"

"Abby Borden. Lizzie's mother."

"Stepmother," he corrected with a sly grin. "Lizzie killed her before she killed Andrew, as I recall. Anyway, I can't help but think that this guy's killer did the deed while in the buff."

"Wow. And then 'ew'. I mean, the last thing I'd want to see, before I died, is a naked relative," Juliet said, shuddering. "I saw my grandmother once, accidentally. She was coming out of the shower just as I walked into the bathroom. It was like a bloodhound in a shower cap. I nearly fainted."

He eyed her coldly.

"Sorry." She poured herself a cup of coffee, then refreshed his cup.

"We need to do a little digging on the victim's family. He was a widower, but he had two kids – sons, both still in college. And then we need to know how the killer would leave behind a few drops of blood."

She nodded. "Maybe he or she accidentally cut themselves with the weapon?" At his nod, she smiled. "I'll see where they were at the time," she told him. "Um…do you have a date tonight with…uh…Sophie?"

"Yeah." He was flipping through the contents of another folder, then he got online and went to Wikipedia, where she saw him type in 'Lizzie Borden'. "She wants me to meet her mother tonight."

Juliet almost choked on her coffee, and put the cup down. This meant it was Serious. Sophie was Serious about Carlton. One date, which had obviously lead to an X-rated sleepover, and now she wanted him to meet her family. Juliet took a deep breath, batting away the voice that was now shrieking _You have got to put a stop to this NOW!_

Her reasonable, kind-hearted, always-wanting-the-best-for-him side forced her to carry on, as if she was okay. "I guess…you're really…uh…"

"I wasn't exactly expecting it. I'm sure that when I traumatize the old broad, that'll be the end of it." He was reading up on Lizzie. "Yep…the murder took place on August the forth, eighteen-ninety-two. Really, it's still a mystery. Dya know she was a kleptomaniac? And even after she was found innocent, she was ostracized…"

"Right. As for Sophie's mother…don't say that, Carlton. If she has any sense at all, she'll like you just fine." She thought about her own mother then – she would probably be startled by Carlton, but she would likely also find him worthy of a lot of trouble.

He studied Juliet for a few moments, clearly at a loss as to how to respond to that. He could take commendations on a job well done so far as his work went, or particularly when O'Hara or any other cop under his command had done a good job, which they all almost always did. But such a statement from her, directed at _him_, left him flummoxed.

"Sure," he finally mumbled, then logged out of his computer and stood up quickly, so that he felt a brief flash of dizzyness. "I've gotta go. Stuff…to…er…do. Right. I have stuff…to do. Read up on Lizzie Borden, see if anything…er…springs to mind." He stared briefly at Juliet, who turned back to her computer, Googling Lizzie Borden (she didn't like Wikipedia's editorial policies – any man Jack could edit an article) and sitting back for some reading. Carlton sighed inwardly, struggling to bring up some enthusiasm for meeting Sophie's mother, but found that impossible. All in all, he would rather sit here all night, bickering with his partner about nude murderers.

* * *

Sophie's mother was actually a pretty nice old biddy. He had to admit that, between mouthfuls of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Her name was Caroline, she was sixty-seven, had three other children besides Sophie (including her wayward sister, whose name was apparently mud these days) and was a superb cook of what was called 'comfort food', influenced largely by the South. In fact, she was a Georgia-born former belle and waxed eloquent about ye old cotton fields back home.

"We were Quakers, actually, so my family didn't own slaves. The Yankees still burned our house to the ground, the filthy bastards, and they stole all the horses and shot all the cattle. Did you ever hear about Southerners eating pork, cabbage and black-eyed peas on New Years' Day?" Caroline smiled at Carlton, having swung into the subject of the Civil War when Sophie mentioned Carlton's interest in the subject. "Apparently, after the Yankees burned and stole everything that wasn't nailed down or considered edible, all we had left was wild pigs, cabbage and black-eyed peas, which they thought was cattle food up North. So we survived on that, and so did lots of other Southern families, and we started eatin' that stuff on New Years', for good luck or some such. In my family, of course, we'd also put a dime in the cole slaw and whoever found it got a prize of some sort."

"I've heard of it," Carlton nodded. "Not the dime part. In my family, if we found a dime in our food, there'd be lawyers on the phone, with dramatic accusations of attempted murder."

"A bit suspicious of one another, your family?"

Carlton shrugged. "Not exactly. Family reunions just don't go well. They often lead to bloodshed. Last one we had, I walked away with a limp and a black eye. Don't even get me started on how games of Pictionary can go…"

"Good heavens! Irish, right? Lassiter is a fine old Irish name."

"It's an old Irish name. I have no comment on the 'fine' part."

Caroline laughed. "I must say, you seem like a nice enough fellow, for an Irishman and a Yankee."

"I'm a Californian, ma'am," he reminded her. "But my great-grandmother was born in Kentucky. Came to California in a Conestoga wagon. She ate a relative at Donner Pass."

Sophie almost spat up her carrot cake, her eyes watering as she laughed.

"Ah, right…sounds about right, for a Kentucky hardboot." The old woman stood and began gathering up the coffee cups before tottering from the room, headed in the general direction of the kitchen. Sophie grinned at him.

"You made a good impression. She usually hates my boyfriends. She particularly hated the one I brought home a few years ago…the one that slept with my sister."

"I'm make sure to avoid your sister, then."

Sophie looked pleased. "So how's that case going? The one with the naked dead guy?"

"Ah, right…the naked and the dead. We've got a lead, but we're doing some checking around. The tiresome footwork and paperwork and other kinds of work that makes being a detective not nearly as glamorous or exciting as you'd think."

"How long has Detective O'Hara been your partner?" she asked.

"Uh…almost seven years now."

"Wow. A lot of marriages don't last that long."

He gave her a cautious look, wondering – had she picked up on something? He searched through his (usually excellent) memory for any and all possible meetings between himself, O'Hara and Sophie at the same time, and couldn't think of any that could have raised any signals to Sophie.

"Well…er…mine didn't," he finally said, tugging uneasily at his collar. "But you should be aware that partnerships…police partnerships…are sacrosanct. Sometimes they're deeper and more…uh…_close_ than marriages."

"Is that just between male and female partnerships, or is that the case for all partnerships?" she asked, and he saw some wariness in her eyes. _Red alert! Red alert!_

"Um…either way," he lied, hoping he sounded convincing, because he knew he was terrible at lying. He had only had female partners, both professionally and personally, so he couldn't say how it was between two male partners among other detectives. He didn't actually want to think about how close two guys could get. He saw a bit of that between Spencer and Guster, and also knew they would start squawking and denying rather vehemently that they were anything other than partners.

Then again, Spencer was having lunch with that Polish poet tomorrow, with a translator in tow, and so he had to wonder about the strength of _that_ partnership as well.

But no matter how things went with Sophie, he knew he could never get as close to her as he was to O'Hara.

Or how close he secretly and quietly wished he could _get_ to O'Hara.

Because that just wasn't going to happen.

Ever.

* * *

Carlton searched online for a while, and tried Netflix, but just like always, that site did not include_ The Legend of Lizzie Borden_ in its lineup. He ended up watching – for reasons that baffled him – a _Wallace & Gromit_ feature instead and finally gave up (it involved model train tracks and a penguin, which was scary enough, frankly). He had left Sophie at her mother's, the two women having gotten into a debate about who was sexier: Clark Gable or Errol Flynn? Carlton wasn't about get dragged into that one, so he had kissed his girlfriend goodbye and had headed home. Now he was sitting at his desk, laptop glowing in the dark, tapping a pencil on the file about the nudist colony murder.

All the lab results were back. The three drops of blood had not been conclusive so far as the sex of the potential killer, but the boys downstairs had been very certain that the killer was related to the dead man. Checks of his two sons had shown them to have iron-clad alibis, and they were both back in Santa Barbara, arranging their father's funeral and coming to terms with the fact that he was dead and had been a closeted nudist. He wasn't looking forward to talking to those two young men.

He called O'Hara at just past eleven o'clock, knowing she would be up, because tomorrow she had half the day off because she had a doctor's appointment (About what? Was she sick? Was it a cautionary visit? A checkup?) and would likely be up watching dumb movies, too.

"Hey, lab results are back. Three drops, definite relation to the victim, no go on the sex of the killer, though."

"Is this my stalker from the crime lab?" she asked, in a rather breathy voice.

"You…wait, you have a stalker? Who?" he snapped, immediately alert. He would rip the son of a bitch to shreds…

"I'm only joking, Carlton. Relax."

"Good." He ran a hand through his hair. She didn't know how many people he had threatened, over the years, after they had looked at her in a less-than-respectful way. Some of them were probably still shaking.

"How did it go with Sophie?"

"Okay. Her mother was nice. A native of Georgia. She made us meatloaf."

"Oh. That's good."

He could picture O'Hara, sitting there in her pajamas, feet encased in the gag bear-feet slippers he had given her for Christmas last year. Popcorn beside her on the couch, TV muted. She had given him slippers that looked like Animal from _The Muppets_, and he would never, EVER admit that he wore them sometimes, when it got cold. Those google-eyes would stare up at him and he would always feel just a little…better, because they made him think about her. She always made him feel better.

"And did she like you?"

"Well, she didn't look like she wanted to have a contract put out on me, so I guess so. I dunno."

"Carlton…you need to reconcile yourself to the fact that a lot of people like you."

"Name one," he snorted.

"Me. I like you."

He let the words hang there, unsure of where to squirrel them away for future use. He could put them in that little part of his brain that he labeled 'Undeserved Compliments From O'Hara', or he could hide them away in his heart, under 'When It's Really Cold and You're Out of Whiskey'. He opted for his heart, maybe foolishly, but he wasn't a man who put a lot of stock in hope, but he needed a spot of warmth there just the same, to stay human.

"Well…you're…you're…prejudiced."

She laughed. Like aloe on a burn.

"I guess I am. I know you, after all. The real you. The one that climbed a tree last year to save a kitten for a little girl, even though you _hate_ cats. The guy who trolled around for money from everybody at the station, so that old man could get a wheelchair. I know the _secret_ Carlton Lassiter, who doesn't let anybody in. Who has the biggest heart in the world and does everything he can to hide it."

He remembered that old man. He had lived next door to some robbery victim, and while Spencer had been flailing around, getting some kind of fake 'vision' about who had done it (and getting it wrong), Carlton had noticed an old geezer next door who was using a rickety old walker to shuffle out for his newspaper. A quick series of _sotto voce_ questions, a whip-round at the station, and _voila_, the old man was whizzing around the local supermarket, grinning like a loon and flirting with the checkout girls.

The kitten had scratched his hand, climbed up his face and over his head and had dove right into the little girl's arms, curling up and purring as if it wasn't a descendant of that cat from _Pet Semetary_. But he knew better. He remembered the Irish curse his grandmother had taught him, and had hissed it at the kitten, in Irish Gaelic: _May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope!_

"Yeah…well…don't tell anybody. It'll ruin my reputation."

"Oh, Carlton, why do you _want_ people to think you're a grump? Why not look at the bright side of things?"

"Somehow, I can't picture a criminal shaking in his boots when he finds out Carlton 'Detective Sunshine' Lassiter is on his trail. Better to think it's Detective Doom."

She giggled – another balm. "And if I ever hear the _Mirror_ call you Detective Dipstick again, I'll inflict great bodily harm on the editor of that so-called 'paper'."

"Eh…I don't give a damn. I stopped caring what they thought a long time ago."

"Good." She paused. "Why are you up?"

"Crime never sleeps, so I don't either."

"Carlton…"

"I was up watching movies on Netflix."

"Did you find that one about Lizzie Borden?"

"Netflix didn't have it."

"Ah. I found it at a Blockbuster that's going out of business. Wanna come over and watch it with me?"

He looked at the clock. It was almost midnight. He wasn't going to sleep any time soon. He looked around the Spartan room, frowning. "Sure. I'll be there in ten."

"I'll have the popcorn ready."


	7. Chapter 7

I actually still haven't managed to watch all of _The Legend of Lizzie Borden_, but I will. Somehow. It's online. I started watching it, then I got into _Murder in Coweta County_, with Johnny Cash & Andy Griffith. I mean, it starred the two men. They weren't here. At least I don't think they were. But anyway, I got a small but forceful kick from my muse and lookee here, another chapter completed! Yah-boo!

* * *

Juliet had her apartment cleaned up to a standard her mother would only find sub-par, and was wiping down countertops and shoving things into cabinets with little thought as to the fact that the bread didn't really belong up there among the drinking glasses. The bread would get over it, and the glasses would just have to suffer. She doubted Carlton would actually snoop around to make sure things were as they should be. She was sure his staples often ended up in the wrong places, too.

Just the same, she wanted her place to look somewhat orderly. He was an orderly man. Not as OCD as he had been when she had first met him, but she didn't hold it against him that he liked things to be organized. It made for a less stressful life when you could find the cutlery and the appliances weren't off on an adventure.

She heard her doorbell go _clunk_ – a miserable project on her own part to get it fixed – and rushed out to answer. She yanked the door open and he looked up from what had apparently been a careful study of his feet.

"Oh. Hi."

A rush of excitement and something…_else_…bubbled up and almost came out of as a giggle. God help her, but he did look dashing, even if he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt displaying what little remained of a college mascot. He was wearing weathered running shoes, and looked as comfortable as a Sunday afternoon. Again – a definite change from how he had been so long ago. He _was_ learning how to relax. A little. "Hi."

"Come on in. I've got the DVD ready and two bowls of warm popcorn prepared for consumption."

He nodded and stepped inside. She had had him over for meals before, but never at such a late hour, and not to watch a movie, and she wondered, briefly, why she hadn't before. Shawn occasionally invited himself over – with Gus, of course – to watch some stupid movie, and she usually just indulged him, knowing his attention span only lasted so long (okay, five minutes, tops) and he and Gus would want churros or creamsicles or anything else edible that they hadn't already snorked up from her refrigerator and they would finally leave (with her needing to take an epic trip to the grocery store to replace all the food they had consumed). Carlton, however, would never think to impose himself on her time or her personal space, and she suspected he would think she would throw him out on his keister if he arrived unannounced. He would, she knew, never dare to eat anything she didn't actually offer him. Say what you will about the guy, she thought with a fond smile, he had _manners_. He was socially awkward, yes, but he was actually pretty polite. Sometimes he could even be…_nice_.

Juliet knew she needed to disavow him of any idea of feeling as though he was intruding. He was _always_ welcome. Any time.

"The guy at Blockbuster said the last time he'd seen this movie was on TBS, about eight years ago," she laughed, waggling the DVD box at him before opening it and grappling with the little plastic thing in the center of the DVD, to pop it out. "He said it creeped him out, seeing Tabitha whacking her father and stepmother off."

He was still standing in her foyer, looking around, practically sniffing the air like a mustang ready to bolt at the sight of anything suspicious. She eyed him – yes, he did remind her of a horse sometimes. Not in a negative sense, though. Horses were fast and beautiful and dangerous, too, and if handled right, very gentle. "What's wrong with your doorbell?" he asked her, lifting one black eyebrow. She sighed.

"I…uh…fixed it." She smoothed her hair back, attempting to look Calm and Collected and In Charge.

"To make that kind of noise?" He stepped into the dining room and finally followed her into the living room. "Is it kind of like those stupid doorbells with barking dogs…only this one is…a goose with a respiratory ailment?"

"Well…it sounds better than it _did_," she said, a little defensively.

"I can only hope," he muttered and took a few pieces of popcorn, munching them and looking pleased at the salt/butter balance she had achieved. She had once attempted to instruct him that he should try healthy popcorn, without salt or butter, and he had glared at her and asked if she also enjoyed eating small pieces of galvanized rubber, because that kind of popcorn would taste about the same. "How did it sound before?"

"Like…um…kind of a…a…_shh-gloock.._."

"That can't be good." He went back and opened the door, reaching around to ring the bell again. He listened to the goose. He looked at O'Hara and sighed, and she made a gesture that attempted to tell him to leave it and she'd fix it. But she knew better – if he had to, he would use her spare key to get in and fix it while she was at the station.

He was the only other person in her life who possessed a key to her house.

The guy could fix _anything_, she thought, as he closed the door and locked it again. He had repaired her car a few times, too, and one time he had even removed some tiny little monster from inside her old VCR that kept eating tapes. It was annoying to her staunch (if somewhat stupid) feminist beliefs, but it was also…a sign that under that gruff exterior and irascible temper dwelt a heart made of pure gold. He always refused payment, and when he had almost fallen off her roof and got his hands scraped up, he had refused to let her treat the wounds. In fact, as she recalled, he had gotten jittery about her holding his hands and cooing at him in sympathy and had fled, mumbling a promise that he would put aloe on them.

Hell, he even opened bottles for her, including those Diet Pepsi bottles that were sealed like Fort Knox, and only muttered something unintelligible when she gushed her thanks at him.

"I'm sure I can fix it myself," she said, lifting her chin.

"Right." He was unconvinced. She knew. He would sneak in some time and fix the doorbell, then act like he didn't know what she was talking about when she asked about it.

The big jerk, she thought fondly, and let him lead her into the living room. He sat down on her couch, at the side closest to the front door, and she sat down at her end, two bowls of popcorn between them, and she started the DVD.

"I like the music," Carlton commented, during the opening credits.

"Creepily effective," she nodded, pulling her knees up and folding her arms around them.

"What a terrible investigation. They let every man Jack to come along wander around that crime scene," he said, a few minutes into the movie. "Damned Keystone Kops. Didn't know diddly nor squat about crime scene processing or investigation."

She nodded, and they continued watching, engrossed. It wasn't a great movie by any means, but it was interesting and certainly wasn't boring. "The maid – her name was Bridget, but they kept calling her Maggie," Juliet said, after the scene with Bridget hysterically praying in her bedroom.

"Right. The previous maid was Irish and named Maggie – remember, even then people were putting up signs reading 'No Irish Need Apply'. The Bordens thought one Irish maid was interchangeable with the other. That'd irritate anybody, wouldn't it? That'd be like calling me Patrick just because _I'm_ Irish. Bridget still remains a suspect, but not a good one…I've been irritated a few times myself, but I can't say as I've wanted to take an axe to the person annoying me." He stretched his long legs out and she could tell he wished she had a coffee table. Then again, she would bark at him for putting his feet on the coffee table, so she knew he wouldn't gripe about a lack thereof.

"Unless of course the person annoying you is Shawn," she pointed out helpfully.

"Not an axe, O'Hara. Wood chipper. How many times have I got to tell you that? Besides, he's _English_. We Irish have had to put up with Englishmen for hundreds of years. Not that we haven't killed a few, I admit, but I'm not at that stage yet." There was a brief flash of humor in his blue, blue eyes, and she ignored the little _frisson_ of excitement that went up her spine.

The movie continued.

"He killed her pigeons!" Juliet squeaked, watching in horror as Lizzie Borden remembered her father killing her pets. "How awful!"

"They're flying rats, O'Hara," Carlton said, with a note of asperity.

"Yes, but they were her pets!"

"Grounds for murder, though?"

"No. But there's also that unsettling undertone of possible…abuse. Sexual abuse, maybe." She gripped her knees a little tighter, hating the very thought of it. "Do you think he might have done that to her?"

"That's what the movie is trying to imply," he said. "Not sure if I totally buy it, though. As for our own nude murderer, the pieces are just lying around now and not really coming together. I'm willing to search every lead, of course, but some leads are less _yech_-inspiring than others."

She sighed, nodding, and they relaxed, watching the rest of the movie. They were both creeped out from beginning to end, but by credits Juliet noticed that her partner had fallen asleep, head tipped forward and chin on his chest, and for a moment she watched him, fascinated. He looked so much younger – even kind of innocent. If a frequently unhappy, stressed, temperamental, lonely man can look innocent, that is. She got up, clearing away the empty bowls and straightening things a little before she gently pushed him onto his side, muttering at him to stretch out as she pulled his legs up onto the couch. She got a blanket from the hall closet and snapped it out over him, letting it fall over him. He snuffled into the pillow and kept sleeping, and she gently tucked him in, taking an opportunity to touch his cheek.

_Stop it. He's taken._

Damn it.

* * *

Carlton woke up just as light was starting to show through the windows and was momentarily disoriented. He sat up slowly, surveying the room before he remembered having watched the Lizzie Borden movie with Juli-…O'Hara. He had fallen asleep just after Lizzie's sister Emma asked her if she had killed their parents. He did not remember being tucked in for the night, though, but he had actually slept fairly comfortably, considering the couch was about two feet too short for his rangy frame.

He got up, neatly folded the blanket, fluffed the throw pillows and rearranged them on the couch, and found his keys before looking around. Then he remembered the doorbell. Might as well fix that, he decided. He went into the kitchen, followed his nose and easily located the tool drawer, where he found a screwdriver. In less than ten minutes, he had the doorbell rewired _properly_, but he wasn't going to ring it – that would just wake O'Hara, and he knew she didn't have to be at the station until ten.

Carlton was in the process of searching hopelessly for his shoes (where were the damned things? Had they wandered off? Had she hidden them? If so, why? Who hides shoes, aside from Brownies…or did they _fix_ shoes? Wait, were they called Brownies? Gnomes, maybe? Shoe gnomes? Pixies…?) when Juliet's voice made him nearly jump out of his skin.

"Do you want some breakfast?"

"Where are my shoes?" he demanded sharply, after kick-starting his heart.

"Well, I'm not going to fry them up for breakfast, if that's what you're wanting, but they're under the couch."

"Oh. Right." He scrambled back into the living room, found the shoes and shoved them on.

"Do you want breakfast?"

"Uh…um…"

"It's an easy question to answer, Carlton."

"Okay. Fine. Yes. Thank you." He tacked on just enough politeness to his voice to take away the agitated edge. Must leave. Now. Call Sophie. Tell her you're sorry. Sorry for what, she would ask. Sorry for…for spending the night with another woman, just after spending the night with her.

Except he wasn't sorry, and that made him almost nauseated with guilt. He liked Sophie. She was warm and kind and seemed to like him and was now one of only a small handful of women who knew he had a mole on the inside of his left thigh.

Damn.

"Eggs?"

_Eggs_? What are eggs?

"Yes!" he nodded. That sounded like a correct answer.

"Okay. Bacon or sausage?"

"Bacon. Sausage makes me nauseated. Sc-…scrambled eggs, too."

"Right," O'Hara nodded, smiling. "I know. Egg yolks do horrible things to your stomach, and we won't even talk about what sausage does to you."

"Exactly."

"You can help out, you know," she said, stepping into the kitchen. He followed, eager to do something useful so that he wouldn't have to talk and inevitably say something stupid.

She looked beautiful, of course. She was wearing pink plaid pajamas and her hair was up in one of those weird clip things that made him wonder why she didn't have migraines. Her skin was flushed with sleep and her eyes were bright and she looked so sunny and warm and soft and…

Angry with himself for being such a dope, he went to the cabinet, retrieved two plates and some glasses – while noting that the bread was up there, apparently on an adventure – and set the table. He grabbed knives and forks from the drawer, noticing the potato peeler making a friendly visit to the wrong drawer, and started back toward the table. His exit from the kitchen, however, was stopped entirely by the top door of the refrigerator smacking him directly in the face as O'Hara went to get ice cubes. The lights went out and he vaguely recalled the sound of cutlery clattering on the floor.

"…know you're probably noticing that the bread is up there among the glasses and plates, but really, it's not that big a deal, is it…?"

Juliet closed the freezer door, holding two trays of ice cubes, and looked up, expecting to see Carlton staring at her in mock disapproval, and was confused to see him _not_ there. Weird. She looked around, then looked down and was horrified to see her partner flat on his back on the kitchen tiles, eyes open but looking utterly dazed.

"Oh my God! Carlton!" she gasped, dropping the ice cube trays on the counter top, and knelt down beside him, cradling his head in her arms, gently stroking his hair back off his reddening forehead. "Carlton! Are you okay?"

"You knocked me down," he said, as if she needed to be reminded.

"I'm so sorry. Are you hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?" she asked, holding her fingers in the 'peace' sign.

"Four? It's been...months since somebody knocked me down," he said, feeling that he ought to point that out, or he'd have to turn in his Man Card.

"Oh, Jesus…I've given him a concussion!" she squeaked. "Oh, Carlton, I'm so sorry!" Helplessly, and not really helping his current state at all, she hugged his head to her breasts and cooed as if he were a colicky baby. He breathed in her scent, quickly becoming intoxicated, and tried to think of his girlfriend…what was her name again? Sarah? Sally? It started with an 'S', that much he could recall.

Overwhelmed with guilt and desire, he scrabbled away from her as best he could without getting woozy and waved his hand in the air. "No…no…two. You were holding up…two…two fingers and…uh…peaches…oh, dammit…" He pulled her to him and kissed her, right on the mouth, because hell, where else would he kiss her at this stage of mild head trauma?


End file.
